hi im on a team that's building a small sub-orbital imaging satellite it goes up about 3km and deploys chute at apogee and we would like to be able to track it all the way down how many stations would we need and how would we build those?
tracking stations
- Thread starter kbeshore5
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does low altitude sound betterSub-orbital satellite?
3km?
Kelly
Usually remembers to get the pointy end up
It sounds like you're just putting a camera on a rocket. What is your definition of a tracking station, what does it need to do? What are the wind conditions? For a 3km flight a tracking station could be "a guy with binoculars". If you're trying to maintain radio telemetry, then it's hard to imagine that you'd need more than a single receiver at the launch site, unless you're talking about high wind conditions in mountainous terrain. Why don't you tell us a bit more about this flight?
Not using the word "satellite" sounds better since satellites go into orbit by definition, so "sub-orbital satellite" makes no sense.
As to your original question, I don't think you need multiple tracking stations to track something falling from only 3 km. Just get yourself a GPS tracker from Featherweight or Eggtimer (you have to solder Eggtimer stuff together) and you'll be golden.
As to your original question, I don't think you need multiple tracking stations to track something falling from only 3 km. Just get yourself a GPS tracker from Featherweight or Eggtimer (you have to solder Eggtimer stuff together) and you'll be golden.
Need more information.
What data do you want back?
Do you want video?
What country are you in?
What license do you have?
Simple version is US hobby frequencies are 915mhz, 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz. Plus 433 mhz with license. Lower frequency gives longer range and lower data rate but at 3km, all of those will work with the right antennas. You have a link budget based on your wavelength, data rate, encoding and antennas.
Video is typically 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz, telemetry on 915mhz.
For 3km take a look at what the long range drone folks are doing and there are lots of off the shelf solutions for video with a flight dipole antenna and patch ground antenna. We use a USB dongle that gets the video straight into the laptop. Likewise any altimeter that does serial data out can be paired with a drone 915mhz data radio to get data back to a ground station that plugs into a laptop. These are sold by many drone vendors as a pair with one end having a USB plug.
good luck!
What data do you want back?
Do you want video?
What country are you in?
What license do you have?
Simple version is US hobby frequencies are 915mhz, 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz. Plus 433 mhz with license. Lower frequency gives longer range and lower data rate but at 3km, all of those will work with the right antennas. You have a link budget based on your wavelength, data rate, encoding and antennas.
Video is typically 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz, telemetry on 915mhz.
For 3km take a look at what the long range drone folks are doing and there are lots of off the shelf solutions for video with a flight dipole antenna and patch ground antenna. We use a USB dongle that gets the video straight into the laptop. Likewise any altimeter that does serial data out can be paired with a drone 915mhz data radio to get data back to a ground station that plugs into a laptop. These are sold by many drone vendors as a pair with one end having a USB plug.
good luck!
rcktnut
Well-Known Member
One of the many available, GPS, RF should do.
well right now i am trying to make this as simple as possible we wont be doing video only pictures so all we hopefully need is speed and altitude and coordinates of touchdown
Do you need to stream your altitude and speed data to the ground live or is it okay to just collect a recording of that data after the landing?
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