Project Home

On Friday, February 27, 4 members from two teams traveled to Walkersville MD to conduct some test launches. The day was clear, cold, with some wind gusts around 10mph. We used our 7ft launch rail to conduct 5 flights. Objectives Test each team's primary rocket. Team 15265 will try their new rocket - unpainted. Lessons Team 15265 new rocket flew better than their gold/green rocket. They need to get it painted. They need to consider a spill hole in the 15" chute. Team 15266 orange rocket ejection charge failed. Rocket crashed. They need to make a new rocket and use a new altimeter.

• Team 15267 rocket flew nice - may need to add a little weight.
• Team 15406 blue rocket flew straight, but to high. They will need 20+ grams to bring it down.
• All the rockets flew higher than anticipated. It may have been the weather (clear and very cold).
• Our cell phones had issues in the cold - they just shut down.

Crash

Team 15266 flew their orange rocket to refine their flight data. They used a recently purchased E30-7T (12 motors from the same manufacturing lot). The launch was fine, but appeared high. The ejection charge did not go off and the rocket "lawn darted" into the frozen ground. There was lots of damage, including the connectors on the altimeter. We were able to get the data off the altimeter, but altimeter 8 may never fly again.

In order to test the viability of the other E30s, we fired another motor bound to the launch rail. It worked fine (see the video).

The failure was recorded at the Malfunctioning Engine Statistical Survey (MESS) web site. The motor clearly never fired the ejection charge (see the plug in the ejection hole). The motor was sent back to AeroTech for reimbursement.

Launches

Altimeter Data (Excel format)

Pictures

  Team 15266                                                       Team 15267                                                       Motor Test Firing