Back in December there was an SSTV event to celebrate 20 years of amateur radio operations on the International Space Station. I was able to catch part of an image from a fairly good pass, but abruptly lost the signal.
Since then I have purchased an Arrow II Satellite Antenna. Should be getting better results next time.
A quick little update on this project.
I left the solar box outside for 3 weeks from January to February 2021, seemingly the coldest part of the winter. Temperatures dipped to -23 Celsius at the lowest without the wind chill.
In order to give the box something to do, I hooked up a USB reading lamp to the 12V USB adapter. It wasn’t pulling a crazy amount of power (only 0.05A). The kit managed to keep going, discharging a bit each night and recharging during the few hours of sunlight it had during the day. One handy thing about the light being hooked up was that I could see if the kit was still on without having to go outside.
It only died once that I’m aware of and the next day it came back to life after a few hours of sunlight hitting the panel. That was 2 days before I brought it back inside.
The battery was not able to fully charge each day due to a combination of the cold, some heavy snowfall and overcast days during those 3 weeks. On a sunny day, the sun was hitting the panel for about 3-4 hours per day, which would normally be enough to fully charge the 7A battery during the warmer months, but not enough in the winter. I could’ve adjusted the charge controller to have a higher float voltage to compensate for the cold temperatures (currently set at 14.1 V). The only problem with this is that I would have to manually adjust it anytime the ambient temperature got too high. Not much of an issue in this situation, but it would be an issue if this was deployed throughout multiple seasons (ie: 6 months from January to June). 14.1 V is a good float voltage for 20ish degree weather. Setting it higher to compensate for the cold winter weather would keep it topped up better in the winter, but would lead to the acid in the battery boiling during the warmer months, thereby killing the battery.
My initial thoughts about increasing the amperage by adding another battery in parallel would possibly prevent the float voltage adjustment from being necessary in such situations.
When I brought the kit back inside, the battery was not fully charged. Charging it with the solar panel in the window for about a month did not do much to bring the battery back up to full capacity. It did get really warm here over the last few weeks and so I set it back up outside. Within a few hours, the battery was fully topped off again.
This is a spot which has been on my list of places to explore for the last year or so. It’s an abandoned test facility for the Mid-Canada Line, a cold war era line of radar stations used for detecting aircraft. Notably aircraft flying towards North America over the Arctic. The Ottawa Valley had 4 sites set up to test the technology out. The Cliff Notes version is this: transmissions between each station in the line would be interfered with by any aircraft passing between them, thereby acting as a trip-wire of sorts to alert the military to the presence of an aircraft.
The tower does have some tilt to it, but all of the guy wires are still attached. This thing was built to withstand 120 mph winds when fully kitted out, also while covered in 2 inches of ice. Should be up for a little while longer. According to the UAV, the top of the tower sits around 40m AGL.
Only the skeleton of the equipment building remains. Most of the sheet metal siding seems to be intact, just no longer attached to the building frame, and can be seen in the second image laying on the ground around the buildings foundation.
This location does see quite a bit of foot traffic with all the footprints and vehicle tracks that were there on the morning I went. It was definitely worth the visit. I look forward to returning later in the year to get some updated shots during the warmer months.
Introducing the newest member of the Flying Monkey family. Picked up this Mavic Mini recently and have begun to put it through it’s paces. One thing to note is that the DJI Fly app for this UAV only supports phones and tablets running 64-bit OS’s, and the supported list of handsets is very limited.
Luckily I’ve got an older iPad running a 64-bit OS and could activate it through the app on there. Unluckily though, is that the included lightning cable for the controller is not long enough and the tablet can’t be mounted to the controller. I’ve got a longer cable and a tablet adapter on order to correct these issues.
On a whim, I decided to try connecting the drone/controller with some 3rd party software (Drone Harmony in this case) that I had installed for mapping purposes. Seems to be working as I’ve run 4 flights with it with no issues from my 32-bit phone. I think this may be due to DJI releasing an SDK for the Mavic Mini a few months back. Either way, it works and I’m happy with it. Just need to run with the proper overlap settings on my next outing.
During the summer, I started purchasing components for a solar box (solar generator). I am hoping to achieve 2 goals with it:
Firstly, I wanted to have a solar charger that I can charge all of my devices with while camping. There are commercially available chargers available, but they cost a good amount, and don’t usually have a power source built in. There is also the question of durability of some of the charge solutions. They are fairly light, thin and compact too which is handy for hiking, but I envision this as staying put once I get where I’m going.
Secondly, I also want to set up an off-grid simplex repeater at some point in the future and this is the first step towards making that happen. The main point of it being off-grid being that it can power itself, of course.
This kit consists of a battery, a solar charge controller, a 12V socket, and the box.
I used a 7 amp, 12 volt sealed lead acid battery. I could’ve went either larger or smaller in capacity, but the most cost efficient was the 7A. The charge controller is rated to 20A, which leaves me some space to add another battery to increase the total amperage of the kit. The 12V socket is a dual socket and should come in handy for powering whatever radio I eventually end up using in the repeater and anything else that needs to be powered up alongside that. Lastly, everything is housed in a plastic .30 cal. ammo box. The battery and 12V socket are fused to prevent bad things from happening. Dead equipment is not good.
A 25W solar panel is used to charge everything up. I went with this size because I want this to be running year round and there is usually less sun in the colder months and snow could also cause charging issues.
The solar panel has a quick disconnect plug on it so I can pull everything apart for transport quickly. This ammo box is a temporary solution. This kit will eventually be built into a metal ammo can which will be necessary not only for durability in long-duration field conditions, but will also act as a ground plane for any antenna I decide to use for the repeater setup.
I was able to put some of my long-dormant electrical skills to use (if only some minor tinning and multimeter usage) with this project. The only thing I need to do now is to rig a switch to kill the power from the battery to the charge controller. As the panel has an LCD display, it does drain the battery if not in use.
Went for a hike on the Mont King Loop Trail in Gatineau Park a few weekends ago. The sun wasn’t out that day, and the colors weren’t as bright as they could’ve been, but it was still a very nice outing with good company. Here’s a few shots from the hike.
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