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.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Static Fire Tests and Development

This week we carried out some static fire tests on the 8L rocket to see what was happening with the nozzle spray. The full details of the tests are here:

http://home.people.net.au/~aircommand
/day26.htm


We were quite surprised at what goes on inside the bottle when there is some water in the upper bottle. We're working on a solution to the problem.

We're also continuing the development of the Acceleron rocket. With newly manufactured couplings the rocket can be fitted with another three 2L bottles. (Each booster segment capacity will be increased by 2L). We have also created new nozzles that have a 10mm hole rather than the 8mm hole as before. The O-rings are now on each nozzle and not in the launcher. This was done because after every launch the o-rings were flushed out of their groove and had to be reseated. Because of the new nozzles, we have also needed to make the corresponding launcher seats.

Yesterday we received a shipment of the PIC microcontrollers we use for the flight computers. At AUD$2.48 each they are as cheap as chips! We now have all the parts build two new V1.3 flight computers. They will be smaller and lighter than the V1.2 prototype that currently flies on Polaron III. The two new FC's will be fitted to Acceleron and J4II. Polaron III will continue using V1.2 for the time being.

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