The TV transmitter worked fine during this flight but the onboard GPS was unable to lock-up and generate data for the video overlay.  This problem comes and goes but seems to have been getting worse on the last few flights.  I suspect the transmitter is interfering with the GPS receiver.  Some modifications probably need to be made.

Despite this technical problem the rest of the flight was perfect. It was fun watching the flight in progress from the ground and at the same time looking at the TV monitor to see the flight from the onboard perspective.  Wildfire was safely recovered without damage and hopefully will fly many more times.  This was the 22^nd flight of Wildfire.

Photos and a video from this flight are presented on the page below.  There are also lots of other photos and videos from other Wildfire launches at these links:

Bob Yanecek helped me get Wildfire setup on the launch pad on Monday morning.  Thanks Bob!

This is an animated set of still images taken by my digital camera. It was set up on a tripod that was positioned close to the launch pad.  The camera captures images at five frames per second.

Click on the animation to see the  images in a larger size.

Link to larger size animation

This is the video transmitted back to the ground during the flight.  It was recorded on a VHS tape at the launch site and then converted to digital video at home. The GPS receiver was unable to lock-up so it did not overlay any information. That is why those fields are blank in the video image.

More details about the Widlfire video transmitter system can be found here.

View High Res MPEG2 version     (30 MB)

View QuickTime version          (34 MB)

View Low Res  Windows Media Player version   (7 MB)

If you are having trouble viewing this video, then click here for help.