| Date: | 30th June 2018 |
| Location: | Whalan Reserve, Australia |
| Conditions: | Clear, wind 0-10km, 15C |
| Members: | John K, PK and GK |
This month we celebrated our 12th year anniversary. Julian from Raketfued Rockets (
http://www.raketfuedrockets.com/en/) was kind enough to send us an anniversary gift. :) A 3D printed nosecone with
an integrated recovery system. It even included instructions on how to put it together.
http://www.raketfuedrockets.com/en/3dprinting.htm#xl_Phoenix3D
Thanks very much for that!
You can also check out their YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Raketfued
Because the diameter of rocket that it was designed for was somewhat smaller than what we use for our water rockets, we made a small adaptor by heat shrinking about 3 cm of a section of a bottle in some hot water. We then curled this section of the bottle on a frying pan to make it stronger. This then slips inside the nosecone and we use tape to secure it.
We attached a small 9g servo to the mounting bracket inside the nosecone. We drilled a couple of holes in it so that we could thread a cable tie through it. We put double sided tape under the servo to stop it moving around.
For the parachute ejection spring we decided not to use the mounting holes as was specified in the instructions because we were concerned that the parachute might get stuck under the spring. So instead we drilled a couple of small holes in the back of the nosecone and secured a couple of pieces of PET plastic with a wire. These would ensure that the parachute door would spring away.
We drilled a couple of small holes near the top of the parachute door as was suggested and we wired the shock cord to this so it would all stay together. We didn't thread the shock cord through bigger holes because the shock cord can undergo high loads which could have damaged the door if pulled tight.
And that is all that was needed to get the deployment mechanism adapted for our rockets. We could have mounted the timer and battery inside the nosecone as there is enough room, but we just left it in the adapter that we were using.
Setting it all up was easy on the day of the launch.
We had two flights with it, though on the first one we had difficulty releasing the rocket from the launch pad because of a nut I had positioned too high on the launcher after removing it the previous week. I ended up having to hand launch it by wedging my finger into it.
The deployment mechanism worked well and opened cleanly right at apogee. I had a camera on the rocket pointing up at the mechanism, but forgot to turn it on before launch so no video of it in flight.
After the first flight I had adjusted the nut and the launcher released cleanly again.
We also flew our Axion G6 rocket a couple of times. On the first launch we included a small parachute guy from one of the club visitor's kids so that it would eject it at the same time as the parachute. The parachute and parachute guy ejected and both came down to a safe landing.
This particular launch we had at least 50 people in attendance as there were a couple of university teams flying their rockets. A great day for flying rockets.
During the week I visited the UNSW Rocketry team at the university and gave a talk on water rockets. It was a fun evening, and had plenty of questions afterwards. The university sure has changed over the years since I did my degree there. The team is organizing a water rocket competition so that should be a fun one to see what the students design and build as they are going to have to make their own launchers.
Here are some photos from Sam Wilkinson taken on the night:
Here are some more photos from the launch day that we took: NSWRA Photo Gallery
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