Holden Australia have just started promoting their new car, the Cruze with the following advertisement:
This seems to be the first time that Amateur rocketry has been used in advertising! Excellent! A 2nd video after the jump has some behind the scenes footage.
It's been a while since I've given my soldering iron a serious workout, but when I saw the Digital Storage Oscilloscope kit online at Seeed Studio the other week I figured I'd blow off the dust and put it to work!
The kit comprises of both front and back panels, PCB (with microprocessor pre-soldered) and a pile of SMT & Through-hole parts.
Completed kit!
This is a great kit that you can have up and running in a couple of hours and a very handy piece of test equipment, too.
I took advantage of a fairly still day to launch some rockets this weekend, while most of the flights were uneventful, the Big Daddy decided to put on a show... Loaded up with the same Aerotech E18 motor I flew at the Tripoli launch the weekend before, it decided to CATO just a few feet off the end of the rod.
When the motor blew,the nozzle & propellant (which self-extinguished) were ejected. Everything except the aft closure were recovered.
The image above is three consecutive frames from the video.
I believe the cause of the aft closure failure was due to it not being fully secured in place. The closure was done up tight, however I believe that the liner tube may have been a fraction longer than normal, causing the aft closure to not screw in completely thus only having a small portion of thread engaged. As the motor came up to full-pressure, it simply pushed the ass end out of the motor in a bright flash of light. Impressive flight for all the wrong reasons! Check out the video after the jump.
It's official. As of May 2009, I am a Tripoli Rocketry Association member :)
Work has begun on my Level 1 certification rocket. When finished, it will be 4" diameter x 6' tall. I will be using a Hypertek hybrid motor for my attempt (due to the current restrictions on solid propellant in Victoria). RockSim seems to think that the rocket will tip over at about 3,000' on the first fire of the grain and at about 4,000' on the second. The 300cc tank is the smallest in the Hypertek range and is the only tank that allows for two flights on the one grain.
I will undertake my certification flight if I have everything ready at the start of June. As the note included with my membership documentation said "Welcome to High Power!"
Flying on an Aerotech G71R, the boost was very fast (thus resulting in me not getting more than a smoke-trail) and dead-straight with no obvious rotation, the two 18" parachutes popped out right on apogee (10 second delay selected) at about 2200 feet (as estimated using RockSim).
The spike came down without a scratch less than 100m from the launch pad. A perfect flight from what has proven itself to be a fantastic kit. Oh, and this was my first G powered flight!! Amazing stuff :)
