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.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Shadow II and Inverter Flights

Last weekend we had the opportunity to launch the Shadow II again. The Shadow had a couple of minor issues. One was a small launcher leak where the hose quick connector screws into the launcher, and the second was that the on-board camera didn't record. The flight went really well though and we ended up with a new altitude PB. We will have another go at the next launch.


We also flew the Inverter rocket for the first time. It also had some issues and ended up getting some damage when it hit hard. Overall though we were very happy with the flight as a lot of things did work.
We learned that the overall concept works especially with all the internal restrictions. It flew nice and stable and the rocket segments didn't twist around the rocket axis. We are already half way through the repairs and should be ready to fly again in a couple of weeks.



The full flight report with pictures and highlights videos is here:
http://www.aircommandrockets.com/day129.htm

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi george and crew.

Amazing videos again. To bad the onboard camera didn't work with the shadow flight. Looking forward to your next launch report again.

Arjan

George Katz said...

Thank you Arjan. I think we will replace the camera for the next launch as we are still not sure why it failed to record this time.

Reptiglorand said...

Looked like a good flight with the shadow George! Too bad the camera didn't record.:( Are you shorue you turned the camera on? Just kidding. Good luck with your next launch day.

George Katz said...

Hee hee, yeah that would be quite embarassing. I am pretty sure I saw the correct lights flash when I turned it on, but perhaps power was somehow interrupted during boost/landing? It was cloudy anyway so the video would have been washed out. Gives us a good reason to fly it again. :)