Project Home Eleven members and several adults traveled to the Virginia launch site on Saturday, February 18. It was a nice day, but with wind around 10mph. We used the 7ft launch rail for all the launches, but setup the 6ft launch rail. We had some very nice launches and all rockets were recovered. Each team did three launches. We completed four qualification launches. We are ready for final qualification launches in March. Objectives Complete at least one qualification launch for each team. Refine the parachute used by Team 13198. Teams 13198 and 13199 will use the new altimeter. We edited the three launches per team together to better review the launch angles.     Team 13198 Launch Video     Team 13199 Launch Video     Team 13200 Launch Video Lessons We angled the rail 5 degrees with the wind. The flights were mostly straight. We needed to reset to 10 degrees as wind picked up. Team 13199 (purple rocket) needs more angle than other teams. Team 13198 found the 18in standard chute worked best, but it descended a little fast, and the altitudes were a little high. Team 13199 flew a little low due to wind cocking. They also had some wobble which may have been a problem with the nose cone alignment or interior object placement. Team 13200 had the cargo unit break away at ejection. The parachute connection clip was connected to the booster clip, and not the cargo unit which may have exceeded the clip rating. All the eggs returned except the eggs in Team 13200 free falling cargo unit. We need to be more careful when disposing of broken eggs. We may want to tape the baggies closed. We had one long Quest igniters failure with Teams 13199 and 13200. Team 13198 used the copper heads. Teams 13198 and 13199 used the new altimeters. Both had serious spikes at ejection, especially Team 13198. We need to think about this issue. All the rockets came down in the northeast field, except the first blue rocket booster which overflew the tree line. When using the scale, you should "tare" the scale every time you use it. We should be weighing our motors and eggs. The motors can have as much as a gram difference which could be 2% power difference. And eggs can vary between 57 and 63 grams. Some teams are forgetting to record their data! We need a stool for the 7ft launch rail. Bob forgot to set the video focus to manual so all the descent video was out of focus. We added data to the comparison.xls graph. Looking to add a fudge factor due to non-straight flights.   Black Rocket Team 13198                         Purple Rocket Team 13199                       Blue Rocket Team 13200

Launches

Altimeter Data New Altimeters (Excel format)

Altimeter Data Old Altimeters (Excel format)

Team 13198                                              Team 13199                                              Team 13200