Water Rocket Labs

Well finally after many delays and procrastinations, I've uploaded the website extension. Originally it was going to be a separate entity, but I have decided to just make it a sub-section of the new site. This also makes it logistically easier to administer.

"Water Rocket Labs" was developed to help water rocketeers make better decisions about building their rockets. The site provides data and analysis about various aspects of water rocketry including materials and their performance.

The focus is not only on the data itself but also on the procedures and test equipment used to obtain the data. This allows others to follow the same procedures and compare their results against the data presented at the labs. The data is cross linked to the experiments, test procedures and test equipment used to obtain them.

Some of the experiments included in the site have been published before on our main site, however, there is a range of experiments we had not published before. With the previously published results I have trimmed them down only to the relevant information.

We will continue to update our regular site with launch reports, articles, construction details etc, but all new science or engineering results will go into the Labs section.

There are around 80 pages of information in the extension. Some sections are still sparsely populated, but we now have the framework to add more data as we obtain it.

Here it is: http://www.aircommandrockets.com/labs/index.htm

We invite people to submit their data to the Labs that will hopefully help others make better decisions about building water rockets.

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Water Rocket Launcher Article

Over the last month I've slowly been putting together an article to help explain the range of different launcher design options rocketeers have when building their own.

The article is available here:

http://www.aircommandrockets.com/rocket_launcher.htm

Along similar lines as the recovery guide I've tried to include lots of links to examples showing how the different components have been implemented by the water rocket community.
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Moving Main Website

I've been putting it off for long enough, so this weekend I have started relocating our main website. Up until now we have been hosting it on a free 50Mb partition we get with our ISP. The problem was that we were running out of room, well for quite a while now actually, so a lot of the actual images had to be hosted elsewhere.

To expand the 50Mb partition just wasn't possible with this ISP without signing up for actual 'hosting' where they wanted another $50 setup fee and then an extra $110/year for 100Mb of space. That was just ridiculous. So we have gone with an alternative hosting company where we only pay $70/year for 10Gb of space.

The usual domain: http://home.people.net.au/~aircommand/ will be replaced with http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/ . We've had the AirCommandRockets.com domain registered for quite a while but it was getting forwarded to the people telecom site.

I will be replacing the people telecom pages soon with forwarding pages to the new site, and eventually remove them completely. If you have links with http://home.people.net.au/~aircommand they can simply be replaced with http://www.AirCommandRockets.com as all the underlying website structure remains the same.

The AirCommandRockets.com site is now live but there may be a number of disruptions over the next week or so.

The extra space will allow us to upload the website extension we have been working on and have had to put on hold until we had more space. We'll also now be able to add extra features to the site, that weren't possible before.



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Testing beyond 300psi and old videos

This week dad set up new test equipment for us to use so that we can test beyond 300psi. Which is what our high pressure test panel went up to. We now have test capability up to around 800psi, though we would need to replace the air hose with a high pressure one for the upper range. We mostly wanted to see at what pressure the fiberglass bottles will fail so that we know what the safe launch pressure is.

We now have a nice giant pressure gauge which makes it easy to see.... even by those at the back of the classroom. :)

As we look to upgrade Acceleron V to higher pressures we have to check the individual components to see if they will be up to the job. Here dad was testing the thin plastic tubing we are using for the sustainer air supply line. It goes between the baseplate release mechanism and the staging mechanism with a non-return valve along the way. It says on the side it is rated to 50psi operational pressure. We have been pressurising it to 130psi (having previously tested it to 180psi) With our rocket pressures now nearing 250psi, this was always likely to be a weak point ......

Here it is still holding around 630psi! ....If you notice in the background, the whole experiment is now covered with a pile of concrete pavers.

Old Videos

About a week ago we noticed that some of the older videos on our website weren't playing. I'm not sure how long it's been like that. These mostly covered flight days 1 to 55. It turns out MySpace changed how videos are embedded and that broke all the existing embeded URLs. *sheesh*

So tonight I've gone back and fixed up all the embedding code to reflect how MySpace wants to do it .... until next time. We've stopped using MySpace around day 55 for our videos and now almost exclusively upload to YouTube.

I must go back and check over other broken links on the website as some things have disappeared. I try to fix them as I come across them, but there are always new ones. If people come across broken links please let me know and I'll try to fix them if possible.
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Fiberglass rocket launch report

I've updated our main website with the latest launch report on the flights of one of the fiberglass rockets. The update is available here:

http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day92.htm

It includes photos and a highlights video from the day. The small rocket that was launched at 245psi managed to get up to 744' (226m). We thought that was pretty reasonable considering it was slightly bent, used a small 9mm nozzle, and no launch tube. .... right... can't sit around here typing .... must get back to the workshop :) ....

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Great Photos from Acceleron V flights

Andrew Eltobaji from NSWRA took some great photos of our 2 stage rocket from a month ago. He definitely has great skill in catching fast moving rockets in action.

See some of his other pyro rocket photos here: http://s278.photobucket.com/albums/kk99/elta100/ and click on the NSWRA folders on the left side.

Here are some of his photos from the day. I have included them here in their almost full resolution. (Blogger will not let me upload the full resolution.)  Be sure to click on the photos so you can zoom in and get a good look at the detail. I wish I could take good photos like that!



Flight #2

I'm actually not that close to the rocket ... telephoto lenses are great!

It looks like the red booster is a little late in starting its air pulse.

Blue food colouring in the water is a great way to contrast against the white clouds

Secondary (backup) parachute is being deployed.

Coming in for a gentle landing

Flight #1

Good laminar flow from all of the nozzles during the booster's water phase.

Without the blue colouring, things are less messy on the ground.

Rocket is suspended sideways to cause extra drag and land more gently.

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Fiberglass rocket flights

This week has been a very busy week in trying to get a couple of fiberglass rockets ready for today's Doonside launch. We ended up flying the smaller one four times, with some failures as well as some very good and promising results. There was a very strong wind at the launch site and so we decided not to launch the bigger rocket. We ended up launching the last rocket at 245psi - our highest launch pressure to date.

I'm in the process of putting together a launch day report again, which should hopefully be available in the next couple of days.
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Fiberglass pressure test results

We have now tested a number of glass reinforced spliced-pairs of bottles. The results so far look quite promising in improving the performance of our rockets. The extra weight of the reinforcing requires an extra 30psi to compensate, but the much higher launch pressure should raise the altitude considerably.

Next we need to assemble these into a proper rocket and pressure test it for leaks.

The full update including performance simulations is available here:
http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day91.htm

The update also includes a progress build on our first MPR pyro rocket.
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Fiberglassing pressure vessels

Yesterday we had our first go at fiber-glassing some bottles in order to be able to safely increase the launch pressure. We wrapped one spliced pair with a single layer of glass and the other with a double wrap.

The bottle on the left has a single layer and the one on the right is double layer. The bottles are only spliced with Sikaflex 11FC glue for an air tight seal. We are going to give the splices a week to fully cure before hydro testing them to destruction. I'll post the results of these tests when they are available.

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Acceleron V flights Update and Video

I have finished doing the launch report for this weekend's 2 stage flights. The update is available here:

http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day90.htm

The update includes photos, altimeter plots, flight event time lines as well as a highlights video.

Here is a view of the Doonside launch field.

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New personal records

We had a great launch day today at Doonside. We finally got the Acceleron V rocket with Axion IVb sustainer flying properly. ...ie. upwards and also not into pieces. We launched the pair twice on the day at 120 psi.

 Acceleron V taking off on its second flight.

The sustainer reached 787' (239m) on the first flight and 810' (246m) on the second flight. Our previous highest altitude was 637' (194m). We also set our longest water rocket flight time at 1:00 min.We were hoping to break the 200m mark with this flight, and got the 800' mark as well. We are going to have a good look at the data from these flights and see where we can make further improvements.

I will be putting together a main website update over the next few days with more details, video and photos from day.

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Comparing real world data to simulator data

We've uploaded the flight day 89 launch report to our main website here:

http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day89.htm

The update includes pictures and video from the launch day as well as a comparison of acceleration data from a couple of flights and 3 water rocket simulators.

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Doonside launch

Over the past couple of weeks we have been continuing to build rockets, although a little slower due to other non-rocket related commitments.

This weekend we flew a couple of different experiments at Doonside. We wanted to flight qualify the Acceleron V sustainer testing the jet foaming tornado coupling insert in the process.

We also flew three test flights with Craig's pyro rocket flight computer. It didn't control deployment but was along for the ride to gather flight data. The data from these flights and simulation results for comparison will be published in the next main site update.

I'm still in the process of writing up the full launch report which will take at least a couple more days.

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Dual Deployment

On Saturday we had a good launch day at Doonside. We tested a dual deploy mechanism on a couple of smaller rockets, and even managed to explode one on the pad. We also test flew the MD-80 clone camera on 3 of the flights.

The full update is available here:
http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day88.htm

The update includes, videos of both water and pyro action from the day. There are also a couple of updates on some of the other things we have been working on.

Photo: Andrew E.

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Acceleron V rebuild

We've made good progress this week in getting Acceleron V back on the launch pad. Early in the week we tested the new narrow nozzle seals to make sure they will hold up to the pressure. This was also a pressure test of the booster side of the launcher. During assembly we noticed that one of the nozzle seals was distorting too much when the bottle was tightened. So dad machined up a new nozzle seal cutter that was a little wider and we made 3 new nozzle seals out of harder rubber. These worked well during assembly and in the pressure test.

Pressure testing the new nozzle seals. You can see the fog in the upper bottles as we let the pressure out.

On Friday we pressure tested the sustainer release mechanism and air supply. During the test we noticed that there was a very minor leak (1 or 2 drops per second) in the release head. On closer inspection it looked like there were a couple of small vertical grooves in the o-ring seat. So we spent today replacing the Gardena release mechanism with a new one. We are letting the epoxy fully cure before doing another test.

We spent the rest of today re-assembling Acceleron back to its normal configuration,.

Attaching the fins with the use of a fin alignment jig.

There are still lots of little jobs to do on the rocket, but it's good to see it back together again. We will do an integration pressure check to around 60psi to make sure there are no leaks in the Tornado couplings without putting too much stress on the entire rocket.

Next major milestones include a re-assembly of the sustainer. Depending on our progress schedule we may fly it at this weeks NSWRA launch day to flight qualify it before it gets used with the Acceleron booster.
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Pressure tests

After a week of curing, yesterday dad hydro tested 5 of the new splices to go into Acceleron V. These ones had a slightly narrower sleeve than the previous 4 for ease of manufacture. The results were all good with the test having the splices hold 140psi for 30 seconds. There were no leaks and no visible stress marks.

I'm happy with the yield rate so far for these splices. We haven't had any leaks in the 10 we have made to date. I'm sure there will be the occasional one that will leak or fail, but so far it's a good start.

We now have enough of the splices to put Acceleron V back together again. We will do a nozzle seal check next by placing the lowest bottles with nozzles on the launcher held down via the baseplate and checking to make sure the new nozzle seals are good. We won't need to remove the nozzles after the test.

Because the new pressure switch is only a SPST type, we can't wire it directly to an LED like last time to tell us that enough pressure is in the booster. When this LED was ON (@~20psi) we knew the switch was activated and the flight computer was safe to arm. I'm going to update the software in the primary computer to give us a pressure switch status indication on the LED display so that we can tell when it's safe to arm it. Although we could get it to arm automatically when the pressure switch activates, I still prefer to keep the human-in-the-loop for these kinds of things in case we need to abort the launch.
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Flight day and progress

Last week we went to the NSWRA launch day as we wanted to see the egg lofting competition. We weren't going to fly rockets on the day as Acceleron V has been taking up all spare time, but we did put a couple of small ones in the back of the car just in case. We ended up flying a couple of them during the day. I'm putting together a couple of videos at the moment. One is just a short one from the day showing the flights, but the cloud cover made it difficult to get a good shot against the white clouds. The other video is a discussion about some of the components going into Acceleron V booster.

I'll do a short write-up over the next couple of days. Otherwise it's been a continuation with splicing all the bottles.

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1st splice phase complete

Last night we finished gluing the 12 x 2L and 10 x 1.25L spliced pairs with the Sikaflex glue. The splices went together quite quickly, but preparation took a bit of time because it included heat shrinking the bottles, curling the edges, cleaning with alcohol, sanding and applying the masking tape before gluing could begin.

 Next we need to glue on the outer sleeves with PL and then re-enforce them with the other bottles and glass strapping tape. This should happen over the next few days.

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Splicing, splicing and more splicing

With the recent flights out of the way, we are now solely concentrating on getting Acceleron V back in the air. The first thing we need to do is make up more of the new spliced pairs we have been testing. Over the last 3 months we have been slowly collecting bottles from friends and family, so now we have some 70 odd bottles ready to splice.

We will be making up a stock pile of spliced pairs, not just for Acceleron V but for other rockets. We are also going to have a go with the 1.25 bottles at making spliced-quads. 4 bottles spliced together with a neck at either end. This will give us ~4L in a 90mm diameter body. We'll still be able to join them using Tornado couplings, but they should give us a little more performance. If they go well in tests we may use them on Acceleron V's sustainer.

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In-line deployment mechanism

We've updated our main website with the rest of the flight day report from 10th January 2010.

http://www.AirCommandRockets.com/day86.htm

The update shows more details of the lightweight deployment mechanism we have been recently testing. The Tomy timer version weighs 35grams.

The update also includes a highlights video from the day.

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