Saturday 30 August 2008

Altimeter

I strongly recommend this altimeter to anybody. It is accurate to 1 foot and has everything thing you need to use it. It is designed for RC planes so it doesn't need to detect a 40m/s speed acceleration to start recording so if your rocket has a slow take off then it will still record the flight. It doesn't include a battery holder so i had to cut the wires and then attach them to a battery. If you want a light weight battery then use an A23 battery.

here is a link to the main website:

Wednesday 27 August 2008

booster rocket design

We have changed the design of the booster rocket a bit. It will still be a 6Litre main stage but the boosters will be 2 litres instead off 1litre. The boosters will be two 1 litre bottles that will be coupled together (bottom to bottom) and the boosters will contain 0.8litres of water.

Tuesday 26 August 2008

New Compressor

We have finally got a new compressor after our old compressor broke. It will be great to use for the booster rocket and all the other rockets. It can only reach 116psi (8bar) but that is enough for now. The compressor doesn't have a tank so it is very portable, if we want to add a tank then we just connect one on. We can't bring the compressor out to the field because we would need a power supply, so we will fill a 43litre compressed gas tank to 116psi and bring that to the field.

Friday 22 August 2008

New TDF team T-shirts

The TDF team have now got their own team T-shirts. The T-shirts will be worn by all the TDF members on every launch day. The T-shirts have the TDF logo on the back and will display the name of the member on the front.

Wednesday 6 August 2008

New launcher

Today we started to make the launcher for the rocket with boosters. We only made the base and sliding platforms for the boosters. The next thing to make is the booster nozzles and launch tubes. The booster aren't locked down, they are simply held down by the main rocket just like Aircommand water rockets. The base will be raised up about 12cm for all the air hoses underneath and it will sink through the long grass in the field to create a level platform.