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Saturday,
April 12, 2008
Just another day in paradise! We launched again last Saturday at Riverside Park,
and it was a short evening due to very uncooperative winds.
First up was the new Bandit II, which was part of the Altitrak page deal we got off of eBay. Constructed by Cam, this pretty little guy tested out with a B6-4 and flew to 319 feet and was recovered dowrange a bit thanks to the wind nearing 15 kts or so. There were no problems and it seems that Cam passed his first test as a constructor!
Notice the exacting nature of the height measurement. This is because we invested in an Altitrak device from Estes. Ok, all you high-powered rocketry studs can leave now. The Altitrak is a nice, albeit primaticve device that measures the angle of a rocket's apogee and with some simple arithmetic you can figure out the altitude the rocket has reached. Jeremy, being more of the math wiz, handled this job. In addition, we also bought a wheel measurer in order to measure out the distance the Altitrak is from the pad for accurate calculations. Geeky, we know. But what the heck...
Second up was the Astrolight, which was still in "test" mode for us, having failed somewhat on it's maiden flight. With a B6-4 it flew nice, but the winds were really kicking up and the thing weather vaned pretty far over the canal, scaring us a bit before drifting back successfully.
Last up, for good reason, was the SnapShot camera rocket. It too weather vaned badly, and with a C6-7 on board, it went over the canal downrange nearly to the equivilent of Southgate Rd. After the chute deployed, we were really concerned that it would end up in the canal with several flights worth of pics on board. Thankfully, it ended up in the brush on the far side of the canal, and after a trying bit of search and rescue, it was retrieved.
We decided it was time to cut our loses. Enough fun for a Saturday...
The first flight of the Hornet went perfectly! This was an achievement since we had problems with the wadding not protecting the parachutes properly. This flight everything operated as planned. Next up was the Snapshot, which has a camera in the nose that snaps a picture from the Apogee, or the highest point of the flight. We won't have the pictures developed for the site for a while, so we don't know how well this worked. The flight went well, with only a minor failure of the chute shroud.
The Astrolight is one of those novelty rockets with little LED lights so you can launch it at night. It wasn't dark yet when we launched this one, and though it flew well, the top of the rocket body cam unglued and prevented us from launching it a second time. We then launched the Snapshot again, this time with a C6-5 engine, and again it performed well, pictures pending.
The final flight was of The Hornet again, and it didn't go well. The flight was with a C6-5, and though it went up well and high, the shock cord failed and the parachute drifted off into the wind. Additionally, the nose cone, with its propeller mechanism, went further away than expected and we lost track of it and were unable to find it afterwards. Bummer. We'll have to find another nose cone and a traditional parachute. The body held up well, inspite of it falling from altitude with an recovery mechanism.
This park is way
too small for us to launch on. Too many people make it unsafe in the evening.
But until we find something better in Broward County, this is all we have. Overall,
we still had fun!
©2008 The Zhen Family, All rights reserved.