Improved Sensitivity and New Rocket

This week I spent a day rewiring the load cell and amplifier after one of the guys (PK) on the Australian Rocketry forum made some good suggestions about how to reduce the signal noise. I placed the load cell amp close to the load cell and enclosed the whole thing in a metal box. I also used coax cable to run the long lead to the DataQ logger. The noise level dropped off dramatically. It is now down to around 0.02V over the -9V to 9V range.


On the 70Kg load cell that allowed me to resolve down to ~5 grams = a sheet of A4 paper. (Yes I actually put a folded sheet of paper on it). This means we can get thrust measurement accuracy down to about 0.05 Newtons. This hopefully should be good enough to observe the subtle changes to components under test.

I'm very happy with the setup now. All we have to do is build the stand. The stand is a little more complex because it is going to be put on a pivot to allow us to flip it upside down and fill the rocket with water. I'll have to wait with this until next week as we have to get our rockets ready for the August 30th launch day.

Big thanks also goes to Tarp, astro and patch and others who helped me get the right parts and steer me in the right direction.

New Rocket - 2 Stage with drop away boosters

We have decided to combine a couple of our existing rockets to make up a bigger rocket to launch on Saturday. We are taking the two stage rocket launched last time and adding another 2L bottle to the bottom of it. This actually came from Polaron VI launched a couple of months ago and includes the booster retention tubes. We will attempt to launch the rocket using the Gluon II boosters.

This will be our most complex rocket to date, and because of that I am not sure how successful we'll be in getting it off the ground. But it will sure be fun to try. A brief outline of the rocket configuration:

Sustainer: (Tachyon V) 3.35L capacity using 1300mL of water + foam, 9mm nozzle. It is fitted with our V1.5 flight computer for deployment, has a FlycamOne2, a z-Log altimeter and a single parachute.

Main Stage: (Baryon III) 9.2L capacity using about 3 L of water + foam, with a 9mm nozzle. The sustainer is released by the Mk2 stager, and the single parachute is deployed upon release of the second stage using the piano hinge principle.

Boosters: (Gluon II) Attached to the mains stage are three boosters, each with a 3.35L capacity using about 1.25L of water each. Each has a 13mm nozzle and is equipped with a piano hinge parachute deploy mechanism that releases the parachute as soon as the booster separates from the main stage.

I haven't measured it but it stands about 2.5m tall. Will post details of rocket and if a flight is successful with the next update.

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