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Amateur unmanned vehicles pushing the limits on REACH SKY FOR THE ... and way, way beyond Miniature radio and video transmitters, flight control computers, miniature high-definition video cameras, miniature GPS receivers, solid state gyroscopes and accelerometers, miniature computers and high energy density lithium polymer batteries plus advances in materials science are enabling amateur enthusiasts to make unprecedented achievements with unmanned air vehicles such as balloons, multi-rotor aircraft, fixed wing aircraft, kites and rockets. With these technologies they can fly high, fast and for great distances. A chieving feats of altitude speed and long range is fine but it is also nice for others to know about these both so they can learn and improve their own projects and to satisfy people’s curiosity about such things. Fortunately there are distribution channels such as YouTube and the Internet more generally that can be used to publicise such achievements. In this article we look at the achievements of a number of amateurs in high altitude, long range and high speed flight with unmanned radio-controlled (R-C) vehicles, along with 18  Silicon Chip an amateur-built manned rocket intended for sub-orbital flight, the subject of our lead illustration above. Kites Starting with one of the earliest flying technologies we have kites. The world record for altitude for a single kite is held by Australians Robert Moore, Michael Richards, Michael Jenkins and Roger Martin. On September 23, 2014 they set a world record of 16,038 feet above the launch point (current practice is still to measure aircraft altitude in feet). siliconchip.com.au altitude, long range and high speed Part 1: By Dr DAVID MADDISON Artist’s conception of spacecraft featuring Copenhagen Suborbital's HEAT1600 rocket engine. At the top of the spacecraft is the astronaut capsule or MicroSpaceCraft (MSC) and atop that is the Launch Escape System. The escape system is a rocket that will carry the MSC to safety in the event that the main propulsion rocket malfunctions. No, it’s not a tent they’re standing in front of: Bob Moore, Roger Mar tin, Michael Jenkins and Michae with the huge kite used to set the l Richards world record of 16,083 feet in Sep tember last year. At right is the altitude and speed readings from ground track and the Horux GPS data logger. 12,6 20m of high strength Dyneema for this record breaking flight. line were spooled out The record was achieved at the Cable Downs sheep station near Cobar in NSW. Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) gave them special permission for the flight and for previous attempts and granted them an aircraft-free zone, with permission to fly to 17,370 feet. It took extensive and often delicate negotiations to achieve approval and some unusual conditions applied but it was finally granted although, disappointingly, CASA charged the team a hefty $560 fee (introduced around 2007) for every flight period, which certainly does nothing to ensiliconchip.com.au courage other people trying to achieve something. To their credit, the team persevered with their negotiations and to CASA’s credit, they eventually did grant permission. Hopefully it will be easier to obtain permission for their future efforts and other pioneers who want to push the envelope. An important part of this challenge was being able to validate the altitude achieved. A combination of GPS data loggers and GPS telemetry were used from the kite with both manual recording and PC recording at the ground station. The line used was over 12km of ultra-high-strength February 2015  19 Dyneema (the world’s strongest commercial fibre on a weight for weight basis) which was fed from a mechanical winch. The GPS equipment on the kite was kept in an insulated box as the temperature at altitude could be as low as -20°C. The accuracy of the GPS data was verified against a fixed survey datum by a registered surveyor. For telemetry GPS/ Flight using a u-blox receiver was used and for GPS data logging a Holux M-1200e. The Holux unit weighs just 32 grams. There is an extensive amount of detail on the kite and its technology at Robert Moore’s website, www.kitesite. com.au/kiterecord Weather balloons Balloons are another early flight technology - but they too have gone high-tech. There are two main types of balloon used by amateurs. The first is a traditional weather balloon, often made of latex. These can be filled with either helium or hydrogen, although hydrogen carries significant safety risks if not handled correctly (although, unlike helium it is a renewable resource and helium prices have – no pun intended – skyrocketed recently with a world-wide shortage). Weather balloons can fly as high as 30km (100,000ft) and more. On February 1st, 2014 an enthusiastic group of Queensland Radio Amateurs (VK4HIA, VK4NBL, VK4AHR, VK4BOO, VK4FSCC and VK4FADI) launched a high altitude balloon (HAB) near Dalby. It achieved an altitude of 107,837 feet and was equipped with a camera and transmitting equipment for APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), RTTY (radioteletype) and had a basic FM transmitter. They documented their achievement with a video posted at “High Altitude Balloon Launch and Recovery - Dalby, Queensland VK4HIA – Balloonatics” http://youtu.be/5cRgBPqpJmA The current record for an amateur high-altitude un- Frame capture of YouTube video of the “Balloonatics” (Queensland Radio Amateurs) immediately after the balloon burst at 107,837 feet (near 32km). When latex balloons burst they ideally shred into many small pieces that fall clear of the balloon and don’t interfere with the parachute or payload (this does not always happen, however). A piece of balloon debris can be seen in the lower right corner and the lines are attached to the payload and parachute. 20  Silicon Chip manned balloon is 145,590 feet achieved on 11th August 2012 by the Bello Mondo team. Many amateur balloon records and other information is available at www.arhab.org/ Some people launch balloons and use a Raspberry Pi as the flight computer. A Frenchman, Fabrice Faure, has taken some amazing photographs and his work is detailed on his Fab4Space! web site at http://fab4space.com/?lang=en PICO balloons The second type of balloon in use is, perhaps surprisingly, the humble mylar “party balloon”. These are the small silver-coloured balloons that might have “Happy Birthday” or some other greeting written on them. These balloons have been used to carry as payload tiny electronic packages, comprising a GPS receiver, a radio transmitter, a battery and some even carry tiny solar panels. The entire electronic payload and support string may weigh less than 13g. They are known as PICO balloons and require no license or permission to launch and can drift at an altitude of around 8,000 metres and can reach very great distances from their release points. Note that we are talking about actual party balloons bought from a party supply shop, not special balloons of a similar design. Melbourne amateur radio operator Andy Nguyen, VK3YT, has released many PICO balloons and details their trips at http://picospace.net/ From Melbourne, PICO balloons have flown as far as Adelaide, New Zealand, Fiji and South America. Most of the long range flights are solar powered (ie, they contain tiny solar panels), but many Melbourne to New Zealand trips are powered by a primary lithium battery. The trackers (the electronic payload containing the GPS, transmitter, power and control circuitry) are custom designed and built for minimal weight and power budget. The total weight of the tracker is less than 13g and the transmitter power is from 10-25mW. Andy’s early model trackers transmitted on VHF and UHF and required line-of-sight tracking via the amateur radio APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) network or an amateur radio digital mode such as Olivia or THOR. The range achievable with the balloon at a typical altitude of 8,000m was 380km. The Rhone river flowing into the Mediterranean Sea from the south of France as photographed by Fabrice Faure. The picture was taken with a camera connected to a Raspberry Pi computer from an altitude of 86,000 feet. siliconchip.com.au Predicting balloon trajectories Balloon flights require a lot of planning. It is not simply a matter of releasing a balloon and hoping for the best. One has to make sure the balloon will travel in the desired direction and also have knowledge of the likely recovery area and to ensure it does not go near airports or flight paths. Smaller balloons require no flight approval but it is still important to do the safe and responsible thing. Fortunately there are accurate online tools to predict balloon paths which should be used before launching any missions. One tool is “Balloon Trajectory Forecasts” at http://weather.uwyo.edu/polar/ balloon_traj.html It can output a GoogleEarth KML file which will show the predicted balloon path on a GoogleEarth map. It will even predict the balloon burst and landing position. Another balloon modelling program is HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model) available free at http://ready.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT.php It can predict many types of atmospheric transport and dispersion paths such as smoke and volcanic ash plumes but there is also a section for balloons. As an example of what this model can do, the coordinates for Melbourne were entered and a map was generated showing the predicted path of a balloon released from Melbourne at the time specified. Multiple trajectories can be displayed corresponding to different altitudes and times of each new “starting point” correspond to where a split in the trajectory is shown. Olivia and Thor are multi-frequency shift keying (MFSK) transmission modes for digital data over radio waves. Andy is currently testing HF for a longer tracking range of many thousands of kilometres using weak signal propagation protocols such as JT9, JT65 and WSPR. So far the maximum range a tracker signal has been received using A typical PICO balloon launch showing balloon, payload and two tiny horizontal solar panels. siliconchip.com.au WSPR from a PICO balloon is 16,000km – with only 25mW of transmitter power! WSPR is an open source software program that uses a protocol for probing radio propagation paths from very low power transmitters. Each transmission contains a transmitter’s location, call sign and power. Users who receive transmissions upload reception reports to the WSPRnet database http://wsprnet.org/drupal/ The program is capable WSJT-X software (slightly modified) for monitoring the extremely weak transmissions from PICO balloons. Windows for WSPR software are also visible. WSJT is also an open source program to facilitate low power transmissions between radio amateurs. WSJT-X is an experimental version of this program. JT9 and JT65 are transmission modes supported by this software designed for extremely weak transmission which when received are many decibels below the noise floor. February 2015  21 A PICO payload weight around 12g. Note the u-blox GPS receiver. This tracker transmitted at 434.650MHz USB with 10mW power. It had a dipole antenna and the transmit mode was 100 baud RTTY, 425Hz shift, ASCII 8, None, 1. of decoding signals that are not even audible to the ear and are -28dB in a 2,500Hz bandwidth. According to Andy, the main purpose of this work is to study radio weak signal propagation, and at the same time have fun working with a community of volunteer tracking stations around Australia. None of these would be possible without the network of volunteer tracking stations assisting with the launches. Their contribution to the success of the PICO balloon flights is greatly appreciated. Until recently, the longest PICO flight has been from Melbourne to Brazil which took place from the 12th July until the 21st July 2014, a distance of 16,000km, just a few days after the World Cup (see right)! Unfortunately PICO balloons don’t remain aloft forever. The weight of rain can bring them down, as can UV degradation of the mylar material causing them to leak helium. Ground track of Andy Nguyen’s PS-30 flight. It was launched in Melbourne on 27th December, 2014 and at the time of writing (12th January, 2015) it is still in flight and was just off the coast of Africa. If it remains aloft long enough, wind predictions indicate there is even a possibility it could return to Australia! It has tiny solar panels and a 25mW transmitter on board. At night the electronics go dormant because the low temperature, as low as -65°C, prevents the battery from working. You can track the progress of the current flights on Andy’s web site at http://picospace.net/tracker/new Alternatively you can track this and other high altitude balloons at http://tracker.habhub.org/ The law and unmanned aircraft SILICON CHIP cannot give definitive legal advice about the legality of various activities described here, either for Australia or overseas as the laws are subject to change and are also subject to ambiguity in some cases. It is up to prospective operators to fully familiarise themselves with the relevant regulations. Certainly, people in Australia should familiarise themselves with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s (CASA) regulations CASR Part 101. Advisory circulars for Part 101 can be seen at www.casa. gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_91039 and the regulations themselves are at www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/ F2014C01256/Html/Volume_3#_Toc403541324 You may also be interested in looking at proposals for regulation changes at www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:PWA::pc =PARTS101 As with any activity it is important to exercise common sense and individual responsibility and to set the highest possible example for one’s endeavours. There are always some politicians and bureaucrats who enjoy nothing else than removing the simple pleasures from people so if everyone is sensible, it is less likely for them to do this. In general, unmanned aircraft should not be operated near people or building structures and only in remote areas and within the rules as they apply. There are height and range limits that apply and aircraft should not be flown beyond visual range for non-commercial flights (there are exemptions for commercial operators after extensive training and licensing). There are also special rules for balloons which can be flown 22  Silicon Chip beyond visual range under certain circumstances. “Small balloons” that can carry a payload of no more than 50g such as the PICO balloons described here are unrestricted and require no permission to fly but are still subject to “common sense” considerations. Long range non-commercial FPV flights are not likely to be legal in Australia without special permission as they go beyond visual range and exceed the height limit of 400 feet. Never fly near airports or in controlled airspace. There are also aircraft weight limits which apply of 25kg or 150kg if in a club, although there are no restrictions on aircraft weighing less than 100g. People have rightly been fined when unmanned air vehicles have flown too close to people and crashed and injured them (see, for example, www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/drone-operator-atgeraldton-marathon-fined/5887196). Note also that in Australia there are limits to the permitted radio power and frequencies used for uplinks and downlinks to and from RC aircraft. For the future of this hobby it is important that operators do not give the authorities any excuse to regulate it out of existence as is the case of with many other fun activities. This is partly because this technology is rapidly changing and laws don’t necessarily keep up with the state of play and often because politicians and bureaucrats and some elements of the media usually do not understand the technology or the fun aspect of anything. siliconchip.com.au The radio controlled (RC) aircraft that was flown to the edge of space on a weather balloon, prior to launch. It is a Multiplex Funjet, a very fast RC model in its own right but in this application it was used as a glider and no motor was installed. Apart from that, helium is notoriously difficult to contain and would eventually leak out. If you want to participate in tracking these PICO balloons you can go to Andy’s website and sign up for the mailing list which will advise you of launch times and path predictions. You will need an inexpensive software defined radio (SDR) (see SILICON CHIP May & October 2013), an appropriate antenna and some free modified WSJTX software from the PICOSPACE website. The balloons can be tracked at http://spacenear.us or if it is an APRS payload, at http://aprs.fi Combining the above two aircraft types, there are also balloon-kite hybrids. For those interested in aerial photography from kites and balloons there is a discussion at www.paulillsley. com/airphoto/systems/balloons-kites.html, among many other sites. Using a balloon as a launch platform Combining a balloon for the launch vehicle and a radio controlled aircraft, a Swedish man, David Windestål flew a balloon to a height of approximately 108,000 feet with a payload of a radio controlled aircraft which beamed a live video feed back to the pilot. Many problems had to be solved such as removing grease from the servos of the plane as it would freeze at the cold temperatures at high altitude and also the electronics and batteries had to be kept warm as lithium batteries are very sensitive to low temperatures; their voltage drops. Another problem is that most civilian GPS units are designed not to work at altitudes above 18,000m and speeds above 1,852km/h so that terrorists or rogue states cannot use them to control missiles, so the altitude had to be determined barometrically. The distance between the launch site and the landing site was 101km. The web site with details of the project is at http://rcexplorer.se/projects/2013/03/fpv-to-space-and-back/ See YouTube video “Space Glider – FPV to Space and Back!” http://youtu.be/rpBnurznFio Along the same lines as above there is an Australian project known as “Project Thunderstruck” (http://projectsiliconchip.com.au Artist’s rendering of Project Thunderstruck re-entry vehicle. It will initially be launched from an altitude of 40km but it is planned to be developed as a sub-orbital and then an orbital re-entry vehicle. thunderstruck.org/). The objective is to carry an aircraft to an altitude of 40km and then achieve supersonic flight as the aircraft dives back towards earth. The aircraft will also be capable of carrying a payload for various experiments. The supersonic glider will be 2.5m long and is expected to achieve a speed of Mach 1.5 and 1800km/h. This is the initial stage in development of a re-entry vehicle for which it is planned to be able to deliver a payload to space on a sounding rocket in a non-orbital flight within 2-3 years and orbital flight in 6 years. One remarkable part of this project is that the glider Hydrogen and helium for balloons Those interested in hoisting some payloads aloft have a choice of either hydrogen or helium. Hydrogen is relatively cheap and renewable but it can be hazardous in untrained hands and is not generally recommended in the ballooning community. On the other hand, Helium is the lifting gas of choice but unfortunately it is a non-renewable resource and once released it drifts off into space. Recent reports have suggested that helium supplies worldwide are in short supply and therefore becoming more expensive. Tanks of helium gas can be hired although it is possible to purchase a small amount of helium in a disposable cylinder. Balloon Time have a 422 litre disposable tank which is enough to fill around 50 standard latex balloons to a diameter of 230mm. I have seen such a cylinder in a party supply store in Melbourne selling for $55. Such a cylinder should be able to be used to fill mylar PICO balloons which can also be purchased unfilled at party stores. Those balloons can also be filled with helium at some party stores. February 2015  23 The world’s fastest R/C jet. It uses a micro gas turbine engine and holds the Guiness world record. Commander Major Jon Fletcher with the paper aircraft that set the record for highest altitude release. It carried GPS, transmitter, a camera and support electronics. will be designed by 12 year old student, Jason Brand, from Sydney. Paper aeroplane launched from balloon People have even launched paper planes from balloons! On 13th September 2014 Fox Valley Composite Squadron of the Illinois Wing, Civil Air Patrol, an unpaid volunteer organisation, launched a paper plane from a balloon at an altitude of 96,537ft. Tracking data was acquired via an onboard GPS and transmitted via the amateur radio APRS network. There was also an onboard video camera, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, flight computer and solar panel. The plane was 760mm long and 370mm across and weighed 424g. The launch took place at Kankakee, Illinois and the aircraft landed at Rochester, Indiana around 132km away (straight line distance). High speed gliders Dynamic soaring is a process by which radio-controlled gliders (or other aircraft) can gain airspeed under particular wind conditions comprising two masses of air moving with different velocity. Such circumstances might occur at the top of a hill. When there is a wind blowing there will be a relatively slow movement of air near ground level on the downwind side of the hill and relatively fast moving air higher up. The air vehicle is flown in loops that repeatedly transition from the fast moving air body to the slower moving air body and back to the faster air body and so on. Little air speed is lost in a properly executed loop so energy is gained every time the aircraft transitions from the slow moving body of air to the faster moving air body. Using this technique, the current word record for an unpowered RC aircraft is 813km/h (set 22nd November, 24  Silicon Chip 2014). The aerodynamic stresses in tight loops at such high speeds are extreme and 100G forces can be experienced. Crashes are not uncommon and at those speeds an impact with the ground leaves few recognisable components. Structural failure mid-air can also occur. Dynamic soaring is also the technique by which albatrosses fly vast distances with little wing movement. See video “DYNAMIC SOARING NEW WORLD RECORD: Bruce Tebo flies 505mph at Weldon with his Kinetic 130” at http://youtu.be/r7gL9uA-McY Turbine RC aeroplane record It is possible to purchase (or make, if you are keen) micro gas turbine jet engines. The speed record for an RC aeroplane was set on 14th September, 2013 at 708km/h which is actually slower than that set for the unpowered glider mentioned above. The turbine engine itself weighs 1.58kg, has 18kg of thrust at 120,000RPM and burns either diesel or Jet A1. See “very very very fast Turbine powered RC Jet 440MPH Speed Guinness World Record 2013” http:// youtu.be/sa-TSNeTK-A As an aside, people have fitted these microturbines to bicycles, search YouTube for some amazing videos www. youtube.com/results?search_query=jet+powered+bicycle Long-range FPV fixed wing flight With the use of flight control computers that are integrated with GPS, accelerometers, compass and gyroscopes and FPV (first person view, a video downlink giving the pilot the view from the aircraft) it is possible to undertake very long flights. One person has achieved a very long-range FPV of 80km round trip using an electrically powered flying wing with 32 1.8W supplementary solar cells in addition to an onboard battery. Extensive telemetry from the aircraft is shown, including GPS coordinates. It is not stated where the flight took place but it can be seen from the coordinates that it was in the Dominican Republic. siliconchip.com.au A note on some high altitude pictures All 3hrs 25m of it can be seen online – “FPV Long Range 80km full flight.” http://youtu.be/z_PxhU9i9Ng but an edited version (3.5minutes) is at “FPV, 80km and back. 2.4Ghz RC.”: http://youtu.be/TfDfkjGNWSQ Long-range multicopter flight Multicopters (or as they are popularly known, drones) were discussed in a feature in SILICON CHIP August 2012. They are very popular in the R-C community and new capabilities and records are being added all the time. Many multicopters are now equipped with FPV and GPS navigation. A long range multicopter flight of 20km radius (40km total flight) and is shown in a video at “Long range quadcopter fpv 20km/40km 2013/12/28” http://youtu.be/ zvEHxpoDJVA The flight time of 63 minutes is unusually long for a quadcopter – a typical flight time might be closer to 10 minutes – suggesting that this quadcopter has been highly optimised for long range flight and well beyond visual range. The winning formula for long range quadcopter flight seems to be a light weight frame, the largest possible propellers on high torque motors and a high capacity. low-cell count battery. In the video it is instructive to look at the telemetry data which displays mAh consumed, battery voltage, current draw, ground speed, elapsed time and heading to get an idea of what is going on during the flight. FULL DUPLEX COMMUNICATION OVER WIRELESS LAN AND IP NETWORKS Flight control computers Many radio-controlled aircraft use flight controllers to help fly and navigate them. These range from basic ones costing perhaps $30 to full auto-pilots costing up to several hundred dollars. One of many examples of a flight controller that is capable of autonomous flight is the open source APM flight controller. With the addition of a GPS and compass module it can be sent on missions flying via various GPS way points. It could be used to deliver a small package to a recipient via a quadcopter, for example (but check legality before attempting to do so!). Coming next month! We’ve covered kites, balloons, fixed-wing and rotordriven aircraft . . . and we’ve only just scratched the surface of this exciting field. Next month, in part 2 of this feature we’ll have a look at some of the amazing advances (and even more amazing plans) of amateur rocketeers. They even have a project to put a man in space! SC siliconchip.com.au IP 100H SSeee thhee rreevview in SILICON CHinIP DDeecceem mber 220014 14 (ask sk us for a (a u s for a ccooppy!) y!) Icom Australia has released a revolutionary new IP Advanced Radio System that works over both wireless LAN and IP networks. The IP Advanced Radio System is easy to set up and use, requiring no license fee or call charges. To find out more about Icom’s IP networking products email sales<at>icom.net.au WWW.ICOM.NET.AU ICOM5001 Many high altitude pictures, including those reproduced in this feature, show pronounced apparent curvature of the earth giving the impression of a view of the earth from low earth orbit, which is about five times higher than a weather balloon. At the altitude of weather balloons there is in fact some visible curvature of the earth but the very pronounced curvature in some pictures is more due to the effect of the fish-eye lens used on many cameras, especially the GoPro, which is a popular choice. There are numerous software applications to remove this fisheye effect if it is not wanted but don’t be deceived that you are seeing a view as if it was from orbit. 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