This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Doonside Launch - certification

It was a good flight weekend this week. As we are mid way through preparing the next water rocket for flight, and the launch weather looked iffy for Doonside, I decided to only bring the new pyro rocket "Waterless" (a LOC/Precision Weasel) with me as well as Paul's "Pod 2" rocket.

I had been wanting to fly the new rocket for a couple of months but didn't have a motor for it. I finally flew it on an E15-4W and it was a good flight. The delay seemed on the long side and the parachute opened a little late, but it was a good recovery and the rocket landed without damage. The flight was my mid-power certification flight so I was happy. I can buy up to G motors now. :)



We have had a couple of small water rocket launches at our local park since the last main website update as we are testing a staging mechanism, but have had a couple of failures, so after a couple of modifications we are ready to try it again. If the design proves successful, I'll post full construction details.
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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Williams Westernationals 2010 Highights video

I've finally finished editing the video of the trip to Perth from a couple of weeks ago. I've also used a number of clips shot by Shane Miles as he had some great detailed shots of the high power launches.

Here are the highlights from the two HPR launch days:



(It's best to view the video at 480p or HD in YouTube)

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Parachute Cam and Polaron G1

This weekend we a had a really good launch day. The weather was perfect and the rockets behaved themselves. During some unrelated test flights we took the opportunity to mount one of the tiny MD-80 cameras in the center of the parachute looking down.


Although quite a bit shaky, the video did give us a different perspective on the rocket in flight. The full launch report including photos and a highlights video is available here:

http://www.aircommandrockets.com/day93.htm

The update also includes the test flights of the fiberglass Polaron G1 rocket. On the second flight we flew it at 230psi to 751' (229m) which was our highest (by 5 meters) single stage flight.

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Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Williams "Wildfire" Westernationals 2010

This weekend I took a break from water rocket development and headed over to Perth to attend the Williams "Wildfire" Westernationals 2010.

What an awesome experience it was to see a lot of high power rockets go up. It was great to finally meet a lot of the people in person from the Australian Rocketry forum as well. They are great bunch of guys too. A big thank you goes to Scoop and Mel and all those who helped organise and cater the event.

Congratulations to all those who did their L1, L2 and L3 certifications.

Here are some pictures from the event:

http://ausrocketry.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=2189


Very strong the dark side is ......

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