Balloon tracer for atmospheric pollutants
An operational prototype of the Balloon Tracer was developed and described. This prototype was designed to be capable of meeting all of the desired specifications for the Balloon Tracer. Its buoyancy adjustment subsystem is shown. Three Gilian instrument pumps operating in parallel provide a flow of about 12 litres per minute, depending upon backpressure. The miniature Klippard mechanical valves are actuated by a servo mechanism which only requires power when the state of the valves is being changed. The balloon itself for the operational prototype is just under 3 meters in diameter. A block diagram of the operational prototype payload measures ambient pressure, temperature, and humidity obtained from AIR which outputs its data in ASCII format. The vertical anemometer, which has a measured starting speed of under 2 cm/s, makes use of a Gill styrofoam propeller and a Spaulding Instruments rotation sendor. The command decoder is built around a chip developed originally for remote control television tuners. The command receiver operating on 13.8035 MHz was developed and built by Hock Engineering. The Argos transmitter is a Telonics platform transmitter terminal. The heart of the control system is an Intel 8052AH BASIC microcomputer with both random access and read only memory.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA); Technadyne Engineering Consultants, Inc., Albuquerque, NM (USA); Telemetrics Southwest, Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 6064868
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-86-0221C; CONF-8509254-1; ON: DE86007144
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ARGOS users conference, New Orleans, LA, USA, 23 Sep 1985; Other Information: Portions of this document are illegible in microfiche products
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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