ROCKETMANIA
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- Aug 7, 2016
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Hello all - for this summer's project with the kids, we decided on model rockets and settled upon some easy to build kits from Estes. I picked some ARF and E2X rockets because the area has little clear ground and risk of loss is high - it also helped keep the kids attention, focusing on launch procedures and later on rocket modification / testing.
Over the summer we have 20 successful launches and recoveries - only failures have been some parachutes getting charred or packed too tightly. We started with a couple of 001256 Alpha IIIs and the 001460 Tandem launch set / Amazon rocket - later we added a 002488 Firestorm. All totaled it was 10 launches for two Alphas, 5 for the Amazon, and 5 for the Firestorm / Booster combo.
The most fun for everyone was launching the Firestorm with BT60 booster, which we later modified with a payload nosecone from a Loadstar. We inserted 1 and later 2 keychain cameras, learning the value of weight and balance, center of gravity, and how they can affect trajectory. After some learning, we settled on a C6-3 for the rocket with the D12-0 in the booster, as the added camera weight slows the rocket rapidly after burnout.
Our last launch of the summer was this modified Firestorm with two parachutes - one for the nosecone / camera and one for the rocket body - this was done manually, wrapping the chutes with some wadding, with the nose cone chute packed first, so it would push the rocket body chute out during deployment - this allowed for better video on the decent, instead of a continual spinning of the rocket body and nosecone when using only 1 parachute.
The decent video allowed for some interesting stills to be captured.
The rocket body descending, trailing smoke and blue wadding with parachute streaming but not yet deployed... The launch site is the concrete basketball court.
Later in the decent, the rocket body under a full (small) parachute.
Disregard the dates / times, I can't figure out how to set them correctly on the cameras (cheap Chinese made with poor instructions, but durable).
Even caught a picture of us running to retrieve it.
Over the summer we have 20 successful launches and recoveries - only failures have been some parachutes getting charred or packed too tightly. We started with a couple of 001256 Alpha IIIs and the 001460 Tandem launch set / Amazon rocket - later we added a 002488 Firestorm. All totaled it was 10 launches for two Alphas, 5 for the Amazon, and 5 for the Firestorm / Booster combo.
The most fun for everyone was launching the Firestorm with BT60 booster, which we later modified with a payload nosecone from a Loadstar. We inserted 1 and later 2 keychain cameras, learning the value of weight and balance, center of gravity, and how they can affect trajectory. After some learning, we settled on a C6-3 for the rocket with the D12-0 in the booster, as the added camera weight slows the rocket rapidly after burnout.
Our last launch of the summer was this modified Firestorm with two parachutes - one for the nosecone / camera and one for the rocket body - this was done manually, wrapping the chutes with some wadding, with the nose cone chute packed first, so it would push the rocket body chute out during deployment - this allowed for better video on the decent, instead of a continual spinning of the rocket body and nosecone when using only 1 parachute.
The decent video allowed for some interesting stills to be captured.
The rocket body descending, trailing smoke and blue wadding with parachute streaming but not yet deployed... The launch site is the concrete basketball court.
Later in the decent, the rocket body under a full (small) parachute.
Disregard the dates / times, I can't figure out how to set them correctly on the cameras (cheap Chinese made with poor instructions, but durable).
Even caught a picture of us running to retrieve it.
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