7.3	Launch Support
Launch support will be provided by Akjuit Aerospace and Bristol Aerospace Limited.  This will include transportation of the rocket and payload to the launch site, technical expertise for the launch itself, tracking and telemetry systems implementation, decommuntation and storage of the flight data and post-flight recovery of the payload.

The transport to the launch site should be straightforward with no problems forseen.  The launch itself is a well-understood process and assuming that the payload is designed to withstand the vibrations and accelerations associated with the launch there should be no problems.  In particular, the GPS equipment cannot function in the acceleration/jerk environment of the motor burn, but can be turned on after engine cutoff to acquire lock during rocket ascent.  This will allow GPS tracking from the time of lock acquisition through loss of signal on descent.  The rocket will be kept warm while awaiting launch by enclosure in custom-made styrofoam box with warm air blown in at several points.

The telemetry system provided by Akjuit Aerospace for tracking the payload during decent is an 8', S-band (1.6 GHz) dish.  This system gives 30 dB for a 2 W transmitter 100 km away.  Akjuit has also offered to provide a 6' hand-tracked dish to provide redundancy for the 8' system.

The data transmitted by the ISP and GPS will be stored on magnetic tape by Akjuit Aerospace and decommutated after the flight using several passes through the aquired data with increasingly rigorous error checking.  The data associated with the AVC will be transmitted, recieved and stored seperately, but with a common time stamp to allow synchronization of the two data streams.

The post-flight recovery of the payload will be complicated by the long flight time of the instrument. The extended time the instrument is in free-fall creates trajectory dispersion problems.  The area surrounding Churchill is not densely populated which is a necessary feature for the launch site, however the region is heavily wooded which could make recovery of the payload more difficult.