[NRVR-Members] Interested in a comparison of all flight altimeters?

[Thomas Tweeks Weeks]

For those of you who are starting to get your L1 and L2 certs.. and looking for info on all the altimeter options out there, here's a really great comprehensive comparison:
http://rocketsetc.com/altimeter-comparison/

It even has my old accelerometer based GWiz LCX (circa 2006)..  :)

To cut to the chase though, if you don't care about fancy accelerometer based apogee detection or wireless flight telemetry, etc, then most people just grab a PerfectFlite StratoLogger:
https://performancehobbies.com/secure/store.aspx?groupid=217201312053593

However, if you're more the engineer/tinkerer who DOES like hacking on electronics, ham radio, GPS, wireless telemetry, etc.. I recommend grabing one of these low cost French made, open source Arduino based unit called the AltiDou (just $35 complete):
http://rocket.payload.free.fr/

You can even build you own in kit form for $25! Here's the open source repo for the source:
https://github.com/bdureau

If the open source AltiDuo is the beer-pocketbook tinkerer's dream, then the champagine-wallet version is probably the Altus Metrum TeleMega (also open source, but around $3-400):
http://altusmetrum.org/TeleMega/

I think one or two of our members have those. 


Anyway.. speak up if you all want a future meeting on altimeters, seeing them work up close, and hearing about some of the cool stuff some of our members have done (and are doing) with theirs.. :)


Tweeks