last updated: 21st october 2023 - Day 226 to Day 230 - Various Experiments

Safety First

Search

Site Index

Tutorials

Articles

Rocket Gallery

Labs

Where To Buy

10 Challenges

Links

Blog

Glossary

Contact Us

About


Construction - Basic

Body

Ring Fins

Flat Fins

Nozzle

Nosecone

Construction - Advanced

Robinson Coupling

Splicing Bottles #1

Splicing Bottles AS#5

Reinforcing Bottles

Side Deploy #1

Side Deploy #2

Mk3 Staging Mechanism

Multi-stage Parachutes

Fairings

Construction - Launchers

Gardena Launcher

Clark Cable-tie

Medium Launcher

Cluster Launcher

Launch Abort Valve

Quick Launcher

How It Works

Drop Away Boosters

Katz Stager Mk2.

Katz Stager Mk3.

DetMech

Dark Shadow Deployment

Articles

Recovery Guide

Parachutes

How Much Water?

Flying Higher

Flying Straight

Building a Launcher

Using Scuba Tanks

Nozzles

Video Taping Tips

MD-80 clone

Making Panoramas

Procedures

Burst Testing

Filling

Launching

Recovery

Electronics

Servo Timer II

V1.6

V1.5

V1.4

V1.3, V1.3.1, V1.3.2

V1.2

Deploy Timer 1.1

Project Builds

The Shadow

Shadow II

Inverter

Polaron G2

Dark Shadow

L1ght Shadow

Flight Log Updates

#230 - Tajfun 2 L2

#229 - Mac Uni AON

#228 - Tajfun 2 Elec.

#227 - Zip Line

#226 - DIY Barometer

#225 - Air Pressure Exp.

#224 - Tajfun 2

#221 - Horizon Deploy

#215 - Deployable Boom

#205 - Tall Tripod

#204 - Horizon Deploy

#203 - Thunda 2

#202 - Horizon Launcher

#201 - Flour Rockets

#197 - Dark Shadow II

#196 - Coming Soon

#195 - 3D Printed Rocket

#194 - TP Roll Drop

#193 - Coming Soon

#192 - Stager Tests

#191 - Horizon

#190 - Polaron G3

#189 - Casual Flights

#188 - Skittles Part #2

#187 - Skittles Part #1

#186 - Level 1 HPR

#185 - Liquids in Zero-G

#184 - More Axion G6

#183 - Axion G6

#182 - Casual Flights

#181 - Acoustic Apogee 2

#180 - Light Shadow

#179 - Stratologger

#178 - Acoustic Apogee 1

#177 - Reefing Chutes

#176 - 10 Years

#175 - NSWRA Events

#174 - Mullaley Launch

#173 - Oobleck Rocket

#172 - Coming Soon

#171 - Measuring Altitude

#170 - How Much Water?

#169 - Windy

#168 - Casual Flights 2

#167 - Casual Flights

#166 - Dark Shadow II

#165 - Liquid Density 2

#164 - Liquid Density 1

#163 - Channel 7 News

#162 - Axion and Polaron

#161 - Fog and Boom

#1 to #160 (Updates)

 

FLIGHT LOG

Each flight log entry usually represents a launch or test day, and describes the events that took place.
Click on an image to view a larger image, and click the browser's BACK button to return back to the page.

Day 74 - Flour Rockets
Loading up the first rocket with self raising flour.
Neutrino pressurised to 100psi. ~200grams of flour
Flour cloud makes for a healthy breakfast.
Video frame grab of Axion III rocket launching with 400grams of flour.
Reaching for the moon.
Inches from landing
The second flight also produced a nice cloud and "smoke" trail from the rocket.
Going back for more...
Okay John ... one more handful ... but that's it!

Date:  15th March 2009 (7:00am to 8:00am)
Location:
Denzil Joyce Oval  
Conditions:
Calm, 18 degrees C, perfect flying conditions
Team Members at Event:
GK, PK, Paul K and John K

At the last NSWRA launch day Craig had asked us if we ever experimented with talcum powder in our rockets instead of water. We hadn't heard of the concept before and so when we got home we tried looking it up in Google, but came up empty handed. We then asked on the Yahoo water rocket forum, and we got a quick response from Dr. Pitan Singhasaneh. They have been using them for their opening ceremony of the space technology camps organized by GISTDA in Thailand. They use flour instead of talcum powder. He provided some great pictures and links to fantastic slow motion videos of flour rockets during their event.

Inspired by his videos and the discussions we had both on the yahoo forum and the Forum for Australian Rocketry, we had to give it a go as well.

We bought both talcum powder and flour as we wanted to test both to see how they behaved. When deciding which kind of flour to use, the answer was obvious .... Self Raising..... of course. Cost of flour was 60c / kilo.

The night before we prepared three small rockets to test on the day. We can't fly larger rockets at the oval due to the limited range clearance.

Flight Day Events

  • We got to the oval just before sunrise on Sunday. We have to come early because people usually start arriving around 8:30am to play sports. We took along only our old launcher because we were warned that it was going to be messy. The grass was a little wet from the rain storm the night before but at least it wasn't muddy.
  • We first filled up our smallest rocket, Neutrino, about 1/3 full of flour. Despite the warnings we didn't realize actually HOW messy it could be. The flour dust just goes everywhere. We improvised a funnel made from paper that helped to get the flour in. Filling takes a little longer because you have to make sure the flour doesn't cake up as you pour it down the funnel. A large hole funnel works best.

    Lesson #1
    - Don't try to fill the rocket over the top of any equipment. After we filled the rocket, I spent 5 minutes cleaning the the tool box that just happen to be under it when we filled the rocket.
  • We pressurised the rocket to 100psi. We really weren't sure what was going to happen as we were using our standard 9mm nozzle and the flour could have caked itself well into the nozzle. But sure enough the rocket launched easily and produced a nice cloud. There were absolutely no problems with getting all the flour out even from a restricted nozzle.
  • Next we loaded up a 3.35L rocket with about 400 grams of flour. This rocket also had a parachute deployment mechanism as we expected it to go higher. We pressurised the rocket to 120psi and let it go. This time the cloud was much more impressive and the rocket flew nice and straight with a good deploy and landing.
  • It was either the surprise of an instant cloud or the fact they hadn't had breakfast yet but the kids sure loved running in and out of it.
  • We loaded up the same rocket again and put about the same amount of flour in it. The second flight was almost identical to the first, and it offered a second breakfast helping for the kids.
  • By then there was a nice patch of white on the grass and other kids started to arrive for their football game. So we packed up and went home. We were off the oval by 8:00am.

Lower quality video is also available on YouTube here.

All in all it was a fun morning, and we recommend it as a fun experiment, but be warned that it is VERY messy, and anything that is not dry will get caked with the flour. Be sure to brush all flour from your equipment, and give it a good wash afterwards to get all residue off. You may also want to take apart your launch mechanism and give it a good cleaning in case some flour got inside. Wash out your rockets as well.

We didn't get a chance to try the talcum powder, but we are also not quite done playing with powders yet. :)

Flight Details

Launch Details
1
Rocket   Neutrino
Pressure   100 psi
Nozzle    9mm
Water    200 grams Self Raising flour
Flight Computer    N/A
Payload   N/A
Altitude / Time    ? / 6.84 seconds
Notes   Good straight take off with nice cloud at the launch pad. Came down with no damage using ballistic recovery.
2
Rocket   Axion III
Pressure   120 psi
Nozzle    9 mm
Water    400 grams Self Raising flour
Flight Computer   V1.5 Setting: 4 seconds
Payload   None
Altitude / Time   ? / 25.7 seconds
Notes   Good straight launch that left a very nice cloud trail and plume on the ground. Parachute opened right at apogee and safely landed.
3
Rocket   Axion III
Pressure   120 psi
Nozzle    9 mm
Water    400 grams Self Raising flour
Flight Computer   V1.5 Setting: 4 seconds
Payload   None
Altitude / Time   ? / 24.8 seconds
Notes   Again a good straight launch that left a very nice cloud trail and plume on the ground. The rocket flew in a more of an arc.  Parachute opened right near apogee and safely landed.

 

<< Previous       Back to top    Next >>



Copyright © 2006-2023 Air Command Water Rockets

Total page hits since 1 Aug 2006: