Featherweight Tracker Questions

[Starfire73]

I just received my Featherweight Tracker system in the mail today and I’m very excited to try it out. A couple questions for the experts.

1. Why was there a JST adapter included? It’s the same size as the tracker battery plug. What is the intent there?

2. What is the green terminal on the tracker for? The one with the two screws for.

3. Does anyone have any good Excel formulas to convert the time reported in the .csv file from UTC to US Eastern time? In test sims I’m 4 hours behind what was reported, which is to be expected.

4. I had the tracker on for about an hour or so as I was setting it up and playing around with it, it dropped in voltage from peak to about 3.78v in that hour. Does that sound right? The ground station was on the whole time. The manual says the 400 mah tracker battery should last about 4.5 hrs.

5. Do most people leave the ground station turned off until right before launch? That should reduce the consumption of the tracker battery correct?

 

[Handeman]

Did you fully charge the battery before using it? Most rechargeable are shipped at a 20% charge. Every device I've ever gotten that has a rechargeable battery says to fully charge before use.

 

[Starfire73]

Did you fully charge the battery before using it? Most rechargeable are shipped at a 20% charge. Every device I've ever gotten that has a rechargeable battery says to fully charge before use.

Yes I did fully charge it.

 

[dvdsnyd]

I just received my Featherweight Tracker system in the mail today and I’m very excited to try it out. A couple questions for the experts.

1. Why was there a JST adapter included? It’s the same size as the tracker battery plug. What is the intent there?

The JST adapter can be inserted into the green terminal block and used as a battery connection. I believe one was already installed in the green terminal on mine, There was an extra in the kit.

2. What is the green terminal on the tracker for? The one with the two screws for.

This is to power the tracker.

5. Do most people leave the ground station turned off until right before launch? That should reduce the consumption of the tracker battery correct?

No, I turn my GS on the same time I tidy up the tracker in the rocket and leave everything on to insure a good fix. Last thing you'd want is to be fiddling with turning things on while the LCO is talking about your rocket.

 

[Starfire73]

Huh, my tracker has the green terminal, an extra JST adapter that could be used with it AND an on board JST receptacle for power.