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Day 175 - Various Events with NSWRA

Date:	21st Jan - 28th May 2016
Location:	Whalan Reserve, Macquarie Uni, ANSTO, NSW, Australia
Conditions:	Calm, light winds, indoors
Members:	John K, Paul K. PK and GK

Website Updates

We've had a very busy last few months so this update is a collection of various events that we've been involved in with NSWRA over that time and ones that don't have an update of their own. We have also started converting our website to a newer format that will hopefully make it easier to navigate. We will slowly convert the rest of the website to the new format over the coming months as there are close to 300 pages and 10,000+ images now. We also currently have a backlog of 4 videos and updates to finish so those will also be released fairly soon.

ANSTO Visit - 21 Jan 2016

We had an opportunity again to do demonstration flights with NSWRA at the ANSTO kids water rocket program. Again due to the actual launch site being held in the secure area of the facility, we couldn't bring cameras with us to film the action. It was a good day out and all the rockets behaved themselves. We only launched at a lower pressure because the launch site is fairly small. Here are a few photos from the visitor center where we were able to take photos.

The highlight of the day was getting a free tour of the facility. It was pretty fascinating and I would highly recommend doing the tour if you have a chance.

Pyro Launch - 8 May 2016

On this launch we didn't bring any water rockets as the experiment we were working on wasn't quite finished. We ended up flying 5 pyro rockets, with 5 good launches and recovery. It was a little drizzly but still fun. Here are some of the highlights from the launch. As you can seen in the photos it was quite smoky from the back burning happening some 80km away in the Blue Mountains.

Macquarie University Astronomy Open Night - 14 May 2016

The club again attended the Mac Uni Astronomy Open Night this year. This is always a good opportunity to meet people and talk about rockets. There were quite a few people in attendance this year, probably double that of last year so we had our hands full fielding questions. As a result we ended up with several families attending the following club launch which  was great to see. Here are some photos from the night. We didn't even get a chance to go outside and have a look through the telescopes.

NSWRA Competition Day - 28 May 2016

It was the club's competition day again this week. After we won last year with a water rocket, water rockets were not allowed in this year's competition because of their advantage in being able to launch many times and having the ability to control pressure accurately and hence reach a specific altitude more accurately.

This years competition was again an altitude duration competition where you have to fly as close to 400 feet as possible and then stay in the air as long as possible. For each foot you are away from 400 feet, a point is taken away and you earn a point for each second you stay in the air. This allows for a wide variety of rockets to be flown in many different configurations and people can fly their existing rockets.

So we were up to the challenge this year with a couple of pyro rockets. Paul launched his venerable Pod 2, however, the altimeter in the parachute bay likely wedged the parachute and as a result the rocket crashed heavily and broke a couple of fins. The rocket will be repaired and will fly again. We took off the now singed parachute and placed it inside of John's Dust Devil rocket. It was a very tight squeeze but the rocket flew nicely to 537 feet on a C6-3 with a hang time of 55 seconds. With a few mods it certainly had potential.

To increase drag, we wrapped a couple of pieces of foam just forward of the fins leaving a gap for the guide rail and launched it again on a C6-3. This time the rocket flew to 386 feet and had a hang time of 45 seconds. With this flight John ended up winning the competition so he was pretty happy. He got to choose his prize which was a power pack for his phone.

Flight Details