First Test of Tracker 2

My Dad is working on a tracker for the balloon. This is a tiny computer system that will go in the payload and transmit the balloon's location and height so that we can work out where it is during the mission. We will be able to find out its location from grid references shown on a laptop with a special aerial attached to it. 

He brought a prototype of the tracker to show me on Saturday. It is a system made up of five modules connected together. You can see a picture of it on the right. Unfortunately, it didn't work properly, so more debugging is needed. The finished version will be much much smaller and lighter.

Each time the Tracker broadcasts its message it will start with a call sign so that we know the message is coming from our balloon. What call sign do you think we should use for the mission? 

This is the Tracker 2 prototype. The GPS receiver works out the balloon's location and height then sends this via the radio transmitter. The logger records all of the flight data so that we can look at it after we recover the payload.

Here is my Dad looking at the data from Tracker 2. The message from the Tracker 2 is received via a special aerial that is attached to the laptop. A program on the laptop converts the message into latitude and longitude co-ordinates. We can use these to work out its location.