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pinter75

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Hi,

It has been about a year since I last flew any kind of rocket. I have been busy flying planes and stuff.

A few of you may remember my experiments with flying solid state cameras - the 1st being the "BerthaCam" based on a big bertha.

Well I have built another. It has spent the last 9 months in a cupboard, but after a recent trip to Kennedy Space Center, I have dug all my rockets out again :)

Scratch built, using Mean Machine components (tube/nose). Powered using D size motors.

rockster18oc.jpg


Custom graphic decals, printed onto decal paper in Silver foil. I have a Alps MD5000 which can print white, foils etc - honestly the coolest printer ever made! Also a custom flame paint job in metallic red/silver :)

rockster24em.jpg


Here you can see how the camera is mounted in the video stage. I can fly in either video mode or photo mode. I built a simple timer circuit that closes a relay every x seconds. This is used to close the cameras shutter and take a photo. I have got got results from this in the past.

The mirror cowling is made from Balsa and smoothed with light weight filler. (it is a bit scratched as it has been knocked about in the cupbaord). The mirror is 3mm acrylic and very light.

rockster39zf.jpg


This photo shows the access to the LCD screen and mode button while the rocket is on the pad. The holes were cut with a sharp knife then sanded to shape with a dremel.

rockster50lv.jpg


I have 2 pencams each with different charactaristics.

rockster42fh.jpg


The dark blue cam is capable of 640x480 shots and 320x240 video. It's CMOS sensor has a fast shutter speed and 0 file save lag. This is very good for video capture and high speed photography.

The ligher cam has a higher resolution and greater memory. The downside is that the shutter is fairly show and there is a 1 second lag between shots. Video is quite good and can be 3-4 minutes long.

All I need to do now is get some motors and wait for the weather to let me go and fly :)

I also have a wireless setup. Micro camera and reciever that I can plug into the analoge in on my miniDV camcorder. I tried flying this last year but got a ton of dropped frames. I have got a high gain antenna which should sort out this issue :)
 
Here is the older version of the flying video camera.

vidcam11gf.jpg

My 1st Rear looking setup.

fwdstage12kh.jpg

Side looking photocam.

berthaanatomy18uh.jpg


camcomponents0ow.jpg


Showing the timer switch for the shutter control.
 
Here are a couple of photos taken from a side looking camera.

photo0068px.jpg


photo0075qu.jpg
 
Very nice. I couldn't get the vids to work from here, but perhaps at home.

Nick
 
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