NSL-60 was flown on the morning of Oct 7, 2017.  This was a re-flight of Paul L's NSL-49 gear with a tweak to the cameras.  The foam glider from NSL-49 was loaded with an AP510 tracker and 4200mAh LiPo.  Again, this was just a simple $10 toy glider with no flight controls; subject to the winds like a parachute.  The cameras were swapped, so that this time the Mate808 camera was embedded into the rear stabilizer of the plane -- looking forward.  It was connected to the same big LiPo as the tracker.  The 808 #16 Lens B camera was mounted inside of the craft, pointing out a hole in the bottom.  This camera was set to take still photos and was powered by its own small 1000mAh LiPo.  All these parts were secured with toothpick struts and copious amounts of black electrical tape (to absorb solar heating).  The entire craft and its 3m tow line came to 350g.  It was hauled up with a 1600g cell with 900g of lift.

The hope was that the very low current draw on the Mate808 would allow it to operate throughout the flight and video the burst, glide, and landing.  To give the tracker/camera every bit of energy that it could hold, a power umbilical (cell phone charger battery pack) was plugged in until seconds before launch.
Setting the 808 #16 to still photo mode allowed it to consume only half the current of video mode, and image the earth during the slow ascent.  In testing, the camera used the same power whether taking a photo every second or every 30 seconds -- so it was set to every second.  Annoyingly, the camera's real-time clock got reset, so the time-stamps on the photos were just mission-elapsed-time.

This was scheduled as a five hour flight, so the chase crew had plenty of time to get ready and head out to the landing area.  Getting actual and projected flight plans that agree can be challenging on these long missions.  The gas fill and measurement have tighter tolerances.  A difference in a liter of lift gas can dramatically change the low ascent rate and make quite a change in the final altitude and path.  Even an extra zip-tie can make a difference.  Add to that the challenge in modeling the descent of a glider that could descend at 1m/s or 8m/s depending upon the trim and balance.

The payload then slowly pulled up and entered a very steady glide, with little of the bucking or stalling seen on previous flights.  It also did not spiral much, but kept a true heading northeast.  Robert and Paul followed along below in the chase car.

As the payload descended to the cloud tops, the remaining working camera started to be saturated with the high amount of bright white light in the field of view.  It's simple exposure levels just couldn't go dark enough.

At recovery it was discovered that the video camera was still running!  We finally have video of an entire 5 hour flight of over 246km (153miles). 

And Robert got in a lot of hours of driving on his learner's permit!