When and where?

HONDA! :joy:

I don’t get why you have Acura over there. I very briefly saw one pass us in the opposite direction on the motorway a month or two ago.

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Lol I imagine it’s for tax purposes…
They all pretty much have that second smaller company here haha

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Yesterday:

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Early this morning (taken in the same place as the ones in this post: When and where? - #6632 by the_termin8r). Thankfully it cleared up before we started launching rockets. :joy:

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I really like when you get out of the house :upside_down_face:

You make it sound like he’s a hermit :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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I am when I’ve got nothing interesting to do.

I spent more time chasing after the pencil rocket we have than launching stuff. That thing goes like the clappers and either gets lost or stuck somewhere, literally every time it launches. We can’t figure out why it goes higher and faster than some of the smaller ones when we run identical motors.

A friend took these photos of me launching it and then retreiving it in the next field over after climbing over a short wire fence, some rusty barbed wire and through a lot of thorns and shrubbery. My facial expression is golden. :joy:

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That’s cool. Have you some pics closer from this pencil rocket?

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It’s nothing spectacular, just a cardboard tube and a plastic nose cone and fins. This is back from before it impaled itself. That rocket has seen some action.

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The impalement:
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We’ve got some official publicity videos up from last year if you’re interested in what they’re like. The first one has some clips that are super compressed because they came from a phone. As it turns out, services like OneDrive and Google Drive also compress vids to beyond recongnition.

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OMG you are wearing a jacket! :stuck_out_tongue:

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I was, given past experiences in that field, it gets surprisingly cold down in the ‘valley’ of the field, it was also meant to rain, I needed the pockets, and temp this morning was about -1. So yeah, I wore a coat. lol

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Could you explain how this works?
Also with the parachute?
So that I can understand it? :grimacing:
Totally fascinating

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The rocket itself is nothing but a cardboard tube. The motor does almost all of the work. The small motors we use are about the size of a shotgun shell and contain solid fuel. We’re working on getting certified to use bigger motors.

Motors are classed by a letter and two numbers. For example A6-3. The letter determines the size of the motor (A being smallest, I can’t remember the biggest). The letter determines how much thrust you will get, each letter is twice the one before it. So B=2A, or C=2B=4A. Then the first number determines how long it burns for. So an A6 would burn for 6 seconds. The second number is the delay before it blows an ejectrion charge out of the other end of the motor to deploy the parachute. So an A6-3 is an A-size motor that will burn for 6 seconds and will deploy the chute 3 seconds after it has stopped burning.

The motor is slotted into the bottom of the rocket, and in the bottom of the motor you slot an igniter and a rubber plug to hold the igniter in. In the top of the rocket you put some wadding (a thin, tissue-like material) in to stop the ejection charge burning a hole in the chute, then you shove the chute in and then you just slot the nose cone on. The chute is usually held on by elastic or string.

Then you place the rocket on a launch pad and connect a launch controller to the terminals of the igniter. The launch controller is just a switch that connects the igniter in series with some AA batteries. When the circuit is complete the igniter makes a small spark and some heat as it burns away. That then sets off the solid fuel in the motor and the rocket takes off.

Then it’s just a matter of retreival, pulling the spent motor casing out and resetting for another launch.

The remote controlled glider and the nuke in the second vid were some experimental builds that some friends put together in 7h the night before the launch. The nuke was 3D printed and rubbish. The glider failed the first launch and just slid across the snow, the second launch was a success, and it blew out its 3D printed bulkhead and a motor on the 3rd. The video was edited to make it look like the last launch was the successful one.

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Thank you! :blush:
I think, I got it.
All this shoots were with the smallest possibl motor?
And the motor just need new fuel afterwards and can be used again?

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No, we were running a mix between As, Bs and Cs.

No, motors, igniters and wadding are single-use. You have to use fresh ones every time you launch.

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I got called into work on my day off to act as a security guard as the building was aired out after a motor burned out inside the school.

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There are signs around the outside of the building for fallout shelters. They are originals. They don’t exist.

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Muddy afternoon walk, i love the colors :

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Earlier.

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Also, the pencil rocket now has a place on the wall.

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This was at work a few hours ago. Yes, that’s the snow starting to fall.

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Couple nights ago
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Tonight
CA at its best…
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Two hours ago

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For the flower queen :heart_eyes: @lpfan61 :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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@jrtrussell :upside_down_face:

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