Project Tirohanga -
UC Aerospace RF Telemetry Project
A personal project of mine that I have been trying to get off the ground is a design surrounding RF telemetry development. I identified a gap in UC Aerospace's current hardware: full flight data can only be retrieved once the avionics board is physically recovered and connected to a PC via wired upload, meaning any loss of the airframe or board results in a complete loss of flight data. This project addresses that gap by developing a system capable of transmitting GNSS position and sensor data in real time via RF to a ground receiver, removing the club's reliance on physical recovery for flight data.
I'm fortunate to have both club and departmental support for this project through our main design course, ENEL300, allowing personal project development to happen within a course and giving me more time to dedicate to a project with financial backing.
Beyond the technical deliverables, the project is intended to function as a teaching platform for other club members and interested students, covering the practical application of GNSS tracking, RF data transmission, and sensor telemetry between a transmitter-receiver pair. I specifically designed the project to give hands-on experience with RF circuit design, using a bare (non-module) transceiver IC rather than a pre-made radio module, and taking the design through matching network and filter synthesis, PCB layout, and instrumented verification using a VNA and spectrum analyser.
The project is being developed alongside, and complements, the goals of ENEL300, with the intention of building foundational knowledge and system understanding that I can carry forward and mature into a full Final Year Project in 2027.
I'm currently working with the SX1262 LoRa transceiver IC, allowing for custom design of filters, impedance matching, and antenna design, rather than relying on an onboard LoRa module.
UC Aerospace Airbrakes PCB
2026 has seen UC Aerospace undertake another competition-style rocket, and alongside that we are endeavouring to ensure a robust design of the Airbrakes PCB. Working with a team of three others, I am developing the new Airbrake control unit for the rocket. This is an existing design that I am iterating on, as previous years have done.
My main focus is on hardware design, specifically Sensors and IO, while other team members manage power, MCU, and software.
The skills I am learning from this are hugely beneficial and surpass the knowledge taught in current third-year Electrical Engineering courses, giving me the ability to develop skills in Altium software, understand footprint design, and create my own libraries while utilising existing ones.
