This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Friday, January 02, 2009

New Year & Recovery Guide

Recovery Guide

Happy 2009 to all! With the busy time of Christmas over we are now back to more full time rocket development. One of the things we have been working on over the past few months has been a water rocket recovery guide.

The recovery guide is intended for rocketeers wanting to add a recovery system to their water rocket. The guide covers the multitude of approaches rocketeers have taken over the years, discusses some common misconceptions and provides links to various websites covering all aspects of recovery.

The current iteration of the guide is here:

http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/recovery_guide.htm

This guide will continue to evolve as more systems are documented and as more links are explored. If you have a recovery system you'd like to share that is not on the list please let us know either through the guide's form, email, or comments on this blog, and we'll classify it and add the references to the relevant sections of the guide.

Plans for Air Command in 2009

Some of the things we are planning for the first half of this year:
  • Continue work on the recovery guide.
  • Release V1.6 of the flight computer. The new version has a PCB around 25% smaller than V1.5 and is designed to fit in regular rockets as well as T8 FTC. It is also simpler to set up and use. A small quantity of these will be available for sale. We are aiming to release by end of January.
  • 33L Acceleron V development. We have a lot of pressure testing and reinforcing to do on this rocket and we may need to upgrade the Acceleron launcher for bigger nozzles. We're looking forward to the flights of this one. :)
  • Polaron VI rebuild with larger boosters.
  • Baryon III multi-stage flights - Actually trying to get the second stage separated properly this time. :)
  • Continue with the static testing. We have a number designs we would like to evaluate.
  • Fiberglassing body tubes for stronger and higher pressure rockets.
We look forward to seeing everyone's progress this year.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, great job on that recovery guide!!!