{"id":366,"date":"2013-08-26T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris-stubbs.co.uk\/wp\/?p=366"},"modified":"2013-09-03T13:06:06","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T12:06:06","slug":"cheapo7-flight-17082013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris-stubbs.co.uk\/wp\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"CHEAPO7 flight 17\/08\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to test the new cheapo4 board at altitude to see how well it worked, but to comply with the <2m rule I could not use a standard 100g balloon (http:\/\/randomsolutions.co.uk now stocks a 100g that complies with this rule, which I look forward to testing soon).<\/p>\n

After picking up some 36″ party balloons from ebay <\/a>and testing their burst diameter. I discovered they burst at about 1.2m, well within the limit. The new cheapo4 board was assembled and tested a few days before the flight, and again the night before the flight and worked fine. However once the balloon was filled and the payload attached it refused to get a GPS lock! After hours of moving things around, making sure the battery was out of the way and breaking out the ublox tx pin. I found that it was reporting back 0 satellites with the odd 1 popping up now and again. Not good.<\/p>\n

With some more tweaking and still no luck we gave up, but determined to still launch something I pulled out an old cheapo3 board. This too refused to get a fix for some time but eventually came to life. We attached it to the already filled balloon and promptly launched it.<\/p>\n