Up, Up and Away

Published:2011/7/27 3:38:00 Author:Amy From:SeekIC

By David Daamen

Telemetry applied to modelling sometimes pro­duces astounding results — especially if elec­tronics is part of the payload...

Model construction and electronics seem to get on like a house on fire, new challenges appearing any time these two fields of interest are combined. The results are often rather spe­cial. For example, Olivier Humez on his website |1] describes lots of equipment to enable photo or video cameras to be attached to model planes and even bal­loons. The images captured during the flight and beamed down to the ground are often stunning.

Of course we do not have to limit ourselves to ’shooting pictures’, as Humez proves by the equipment he devel­oped to convey telemetry data. Height, temperature and battery voltage are among the quantities that can be measured in real time and transmitted to ’earth’ by a radio link, possibly backed up by a video link you can watch using an on-screen display.

Mr Humez is of course not the only person active in this most interesting field. A team lead by Maynard Hill managed to make a model plane cross the Atlantic Ocean. The take-off and landing were accomplished in the traditional way using radio-control transmitters. However, during the actual flight above the vast ocean waters, a microcontroller was in total control of the plane, continuously adjust­ing its course with the aid of GPS information. A few details: total distance trav­elled 3,000 kms in 39 hours with a total fuel consump­tion of just 5.7 litres! More about the flight and the technology used on the team’s website at [2].

Among lots of other webbed information on telemetry and data logging we found Dietrich Meissner’s site at [3|, com­plete with circuit diagrams and software for PICs, Palm and Windows PCs.

If you are now anxious to leam more about telemetry, have a look at the sites dis­cussed here, or do your own search using Google and the search words [model | in com­bination with [telemetry].

[1] Olivier Humez’ aerial photography: WWW; kopelec.com/
[2] Trans Atlantic Model Homepage: http://tam.plannet21 .com/ index.htm
[3] Dietrich Meissner’s circuits and software: http://home.germony.net/ 100-173822/d_logg2_engl.htm

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