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.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

How to make a nozzle tutorial

This weekend we've put together a couple of short video tutorials on how to make a 9mm Gardena nozzle. One of the issues that people have been reporting is that they are unable to get a hold of the older bottle caps with removable seals. The video covers an alternate source of caps that are suitable for making the nozzles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiixdmrSEbA

The second video shows how to resolve an issue with some launchers as not all Gardena (and clones) quick connect fittings are created equal. The problem reported by quite a few people is that the nozzle does not lock all the way down into the launcher. The nozzle appears to be locked in position but releases itself as pressure builds. The solution is fairly simple:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y56A9_sIelU


We did not attend the launch at Doonside this week because the weather predictions indicated strong wind and rain. When I woke up in the morning I saw that it was pouring, and decided to skip the hour long drive to the launch site. A number of people attended the launch but said the weather was less than ideal.

The good news is that NSWRA now has permission to launch 2 times a month at Doonside. So the wait time for doing bigger test flights is reduced.
_______________________________

4 comments:

Sparthir Kiwiwarrior said...

Awesome videos! More? :)

You guys have really got some great techniques.

Any thought of having a series that shows the building of a rocket from start to launch?

Currently you more than likely have most of the videos and may only need to do a few more.

The voice over is great too. It really helps to hear and see what is going on. :)

Matteo said...

Thank you, very much !!!!

George Katz said...

Hi Sparthir, eventually we would like to make more videos of rocket construction. It's always a fine balance between how long we spend building & flying rockets vs. writing/making videos about them.

We'd like to get to a point where each of the rocket components are documented individually and then people can use those to assemble their own rockets.

Thanks for the feedback too, I'll be sure to include more voice-overs in future videos.

Sparthir Kiwiwarrior said...

Why do I keep coming back here and hitting refresh to look for new posts?

Hehe that is right because it is so awesome! :)

Can't wait for your next update.