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.
Well it has taken a lot of procrastination but the timers are finally finished. :) You can use the timers for parachute deployment, staging, pointing a camera etc. The full details and user manual are available here:
http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/servo_timer_V2_0.htm
They are now available for purchase including FREE world wide delivery. All you need is an RC servo motor and a battery, and a rocket or two of course. These timers weigh around 6 grams and are small enough to fit inside of T8 FTC rockets.
We've done around 20 flights with these now and are quite happy with the results.
We had a great day yesterday for launching rockets. The skies were blue and there was virtually no wind. We wanted to do some further testing on the servo timers to make sure they work well in real life after the latest round of firmware changes. I was particularly interested in the slow takeoffs and how well the false trigger filter worked with the G-switches. We managed to get 5 flights in on the day and the timers worked well on all the flights.
I'll put together a short update on our main site in the next couple of days.
Progress has been continuing on the Servo Timer II. I've received all the parts now and have started production of the timers. I've been doing some final tweaks on the firmware to try to cover the greatest range of servo timings, as well as adjusting the G-switch false trigger filter.
I'm going to do some final flight testing if the weather is good this weekend, and then finish the documentation. I'm mounting these inside a few new nosecones and will fit them to a number of rockets. These things have definitely taken a lot longer than I would have liked. Hopefully not long now before they are available.
One of the more common questions that's often asked is how much water should I put in my water rocket? The standard answer usually is 1/3 of the rocket capacity, but because the ideal amount of water is dependent on a number of factors this amount is rarely exactly 1/3 .
This week we look at how some of these different factors affect the optimum water amount:
http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/water.htm
The article compares how the optimum changes with pressure, nozzle size, weight and liquid density.
We just returned from an awesome weekend in Perth attending the Williams Wildfire Westernationals. This year the whole family came along so it was good for the boys to experience Australia's biggest launch event of the year. There were so many great flights, and quite a few highlights, from the "Mach Madness" entries to the N2000W drag race. A big thank you goes to Dave and Mel for organizing this fantastic event.
Here is a photo of Samantha's L3 rocket "Lucky Seven".
(A standard sized kid used for scale reference)
I will be posting photos and videos in the coming days as there is a lot of footage to go through. Can't wait to get back to the workshop and start building again. :)
