Elon is launching 12,000 satellites to provide global internet access. What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/05/elon-musk-starlink-internet-satellites-trouble-for-astronomy-light-pollution/
And no-ones even considered what you could do with with 12,000 satellites with phased grid antennas working together. Like an array of radio-astronomy telescopes only as a targeted downlink signal. Am I paranoid? Time will tell. "Who knows which way the wind blows"
Most rockets leave a nice smoke trail to follow. A Hybrid running on Nitrous Oxide and a polypropylene fuel grain is almost smokeless. This makes it difficult to track visually. Does anyone have thoughts on tracking smoke for a hybrid rocket motor? At the launch at Thunad down Under to 26,220 AGL it disappeared pretty quickly once launched from the pad.
1 Find yourself a mentor. There is a lot you need to know. Join the local club. Make friends with someone at the local club that you feel does your type of rocketry and ask them to mentor you. However hard it may seem it is a lot harder to learn from purely your own mistakes. You are still going to have failures. Heck NASA still has those. But you will make fewer mistakes and so have a lower number of failures.
Or to put it another way.
More successful launches.
Norm
Generally speaking a Hybrid motor is going to be a lot longer than a conventional solid motor based on APCP. Rattworks uses a UC valve fill system which can create very long motors. The M900 is 6 feet long. That’s a long motor.
With the Rattworks motors you can take 3 basic approaches to designing your rocket.
The first is a minimum diameter rocket. With a motor like the M900 this will tend to lead to designs with a L/d ratio of close to 50/1. This is generally considered to be the limit as it can lead to large buckling loads being imposed on the airframe. If you want to understand this take a long thin rod and press on the top of it while the other end is on a desk. You press up to a point then it buckles. When this type of force is applied to your rocket it happens much more dynamically. The rocket may experience a side wind as it moves through the atmosphere. This could start the bend and the load on the nose would finish the job off.
This is one of the reasons l/d ratios over 50/1 have to be considered carefully. Also small diameter designs are difficult to successfully deploy a parachute from. There are ways to achieve this but you really need to test what you are going to do AND do what you test.
A high l/d ratio generally gives rockets with multiple calibres of stability. This is a good thing isn’t it. Nope is isn’t. If your rocket is too stable then you can get big wind cocking problems easily.
The next at the opposite end is a design based around a narrow core. You have the motor in the centre and arrange your deployment gear and chutes around it in a larger diameter design concentricly. This will result in a low l/d ratio. The problem you now face is that the stability of a design is specified in calibres of stability with 1 being the minimum difference between your cp and cg. the cg tends to go back on a Hybrid during flight as the Nitrous gets used. This depends on where the cg of your motor was in relation to the cp of your motor airframe assembly to start with. But the short of it is you need to know what is going to happen to your motor cg as it uses oxidiser. Also your parachute and other bits are going to move backwards under thrust. With a low l/d ratio this has the potential to result in an unstable flight.
The third is a hybrid rocket for Hybrids. This is sort of an egg lofting design. A large diameter tube on top of a slender motor mount tube for the motor.
I have gone for type 1 and 3 for my current fleet and Ron has gone for type 2 flying Hypertek
Whichever way you decide to go Ron can advise you and I’ve flown the odd Hybrid too
Norman Mcgeoch
TRA 12957 L3 ( all on hybrids)
Mock up of how the final K3 rocket was going to look. All held together with PVC tape.
General view of the electronics bay. None of the expensive bits are in there yet.
ARRD attached to the end of the ebay bulkhead.
Electronics bay with a view of the ADEPT ALTS2-50k
A very reliable altimeter at a great price. You are going to have to find a dealer to ship this to you if you live outside the USA. He won't ship internationally. I used Ron at BlackDogRocketry.com to ship mine. The service from Ron was great and he consolidated all my shipping for me.
MARSA4 flight computer. This is really easy to program. It can all be done using the onboard LCD screen and multifunction switch. Too big for really small projects but great for everything else.
This is what happens to a slide switch from a plough into a field. Complete disassembly. The ALTS2 and MARSA4 both completely survived.
The spiral woung G10 tube had very little damage for something that had absorbed enough energy to take a 6 inch core sample of very hard clay soil. The end was cut off and it was flown again that day.
L1 Certification at Serpentine 2012
L2 certification on a RattWorks K240 at Serpentine April 2012
The K3 in its form for the certification flight. The big heavy fin can was designed to keep the altitude low. Still got to 9000 ft though. Not bad.
This is what roofracks were made for....
The Williams L3 Tattoo. Thanks Dave.
Thanks to Blake and Dave for being certification TAPs at short notice.
The next Stage was to Launch Karls ashes. No pressure then.........
Experimental self reloading hybrid design.
100,000 ft or bust.......... (this will only do 50,000 ft without the longer oxidiser tank. It'll do for a quick test........
On the weekend of 1st/ 2nd June 2013 the ashes of Karl McManus were launched at Williams Wildfire in Western Australia. The launch was a Tripoli WA launch.
All scheduled events occured at the correct time. Flight was to 12000 ft and all of the rocket was safely landed about 700m away.
Hybrid rocket motors use a seperate fuel and oxidizer. This is generally Nitrous Oxide injected as a dirpersed liquid through an injector into a solid fuel grain which also acts as the combustion chambed.
This is a pretty good demonstration by Ben Krasnow on you tube of the operation of a hybrid rocket motor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLPWqCMb7DE
He should have used an insulating material between the hot ends and the end of the perspex. The devil is in the detail.
The hybrid rocket motor is an excellent back yard motor for experimenting with.
This site was primarily about my journey to launch the ashes of my good friend Karl McManus who died of Lyme disease. You start out on a journey like this without realising the full implications, not least of which was to get Level3 certification for high powered rocketry. I chose to go the hybrid route as it seemed less expensive. It is less expensive, but throws up a number of other factors one of which is the complexity involved.
It has evolved into a site about hybrid rocketry and to prove that Hybrids are better than solid motor propellants.
This is NSW Rocketrys' Mullaley High Power launch site.
This site does not send spam. Email will only be sent to you if you explicitly request it.
Any data you supply is used only for the purpose you provided it for.
The website uses cookies. These are for the purpose of providing data on where traffic is coming from which will allow effort to be better used in the future by targeting the direction the traffic comes from. The anti spam still applies.
I bought this as a reasonable bare bones camera with a good resolution. The weight is kept down to a minimum by having everything wrapped in heatshrink. It gives really good results but the manual from hobbyking was written in Chinglish so I wrote my own.
here is a link to the camera if you think it might be useful for your project.
HDwing camera II
here is the manual I wrote
Hobbyking HDII wing camera
I bought one of these from Hobbyking. The spec looked quite good and it's about a 1/3 of the price of a comparable GoPro. The manual on the website under "files" was from the manufacturer in China, was written in Chinglish and covered a lot of functions that weren't available on the cut down version being sold on the HobbyKing site.
So I read their manual as best I could and then wrote my own version of it in real English it's now under the files tab for the product Hobbyking HDII wing camera and is called "HDII simple manual in english"
It should be the only manual you need to get you working. When I've had a flight with it on my rocket I'll post some more.
Here is the manual wot I wrote
I'm Norm and fly the occasional rocket. This is my guide to the Hobbyking HDII wing Camera. It is not complete. I have covered as much as I have time to. If you have some time and want to update it in english send me a copy by posting in a comment at rocketscientist.com.au
First
Make sure you have all the bits
Camera
*****USB to mini USB lead Mark this with a label as it is SPECIFIC to this camera. *******
Mini usb to Video out(yellow phono connector) and Audio out(white phono connector)
HDMI lead
Now you need to buy a memory card TF type whatever size you are going to require for your flights and the resolution you are recording at 2Gb is 20 mins at full resolution HD 30 frames/sec roughly.
Make sure the memory card is the right way around( gently test fit it to the slot, it only goes one way) Insert it in the memory slot on the camera and push all the way home and release there will be a slight click as it locks. Attach the usb cable connect the other end to a computer with a live port. The yellow charging light should come on and will go out when charging has finished(3hrs from flat)
The correct way up for the camera is with the board on top and the battery on the bottom. This is unlike the hobbyking photo in the manual which is of it upside down.
HD II correct way up
Correct way up
There are 3 buttons one close to the lens, one in the middle and one closest to the power connectors/usb cable.
The buttons serve different functions depending on what mode the camera is in.
There are 3 main modes
connected to the TV
flying
connected to your PC
I've put them in that order because when you start it's the order you will work with.
TV Mode
All setup is done while connected to the TV. When you get your camera it will output video in NTSC. Most modern TVs will be able to deal with this.
Connect your video usb lead to the camera and TV with tv on.
On the HDII camera press the power button (usb end) led next to it goes purple then solid blue.
long press the middle button (if you short press it will go into video record mode)
You are now in the menu section. Make your settings. Use end buttons as up and down and middle to select.
You may need to set the date and time and change to PAL.
The main one is to format the memory.
So go to FORMAT and select it(mid) use up down(ends) to select YES. Mid “all files will be deleted” use up down to select YES and select(mid)
The manufacturers manual warns that formatting on your pc can cause file write problems so just use this method . As it is also the ONLY way to set up recording rates you are going to need to get familiar with it.
A long press of the middle button will EXIT the setup menu.
If you left display info on you'll see on the TV at the top recording time available and the recording resolution. At the bottom you'll see date(LHS) and time on the RHS make sure these are ok.
While we're still connected to the TV and the blue light is solid, short press the middle button.
We are now in flying mode. And recording video. If you wanted a live feed back to the ground you'd use this mode with a video transmitter receiver setup. If you were connecting the video feed to an OSD generator you might not be able to use the camera video on screen information if the overlay of information clashed.
Short press the mid button again to stop. If you look at the screen you will see the available amount of recording time has gone down. As you were recording the recorded time on the screen was increasing.
To change to photo mode short press the power end button. Led goes solid red. Short press the mid button to take a photo. There doesn't seem to be any way to take photos automatically and the speed isn't great anyway. Personally I won't bother but you may want to use a servo to press the mid button occasionally or solder an rc switch across the button but if you wait longer than the power down time you've set it's going to be off. The maximum power off time is 5 mins(3mins when you get the camera by default)
The third mode while connected to the tv is playback. Short press the power end button again and you can see on the TV a list of the camera contents . The light goes purple( purple is actually the red and blue led on at the same time)
Use the up/down buttons to select the photo or movie you want to see and the middle button to select and start or end playback. If you are looking at photos and press the select button twice it goes into a photoshow mode you'll see the play arrow at the top left of your screen. If you press the up or down buttons it starts the show. Long press the middle button to exit to the camera contents.
OK so we've found the bits, set them up and recorded a test video and taken a few pictures. Lets get them off the camera and onto your computer.
Get your clearly identified usb lead(see beginning) and connect to camera and pc. The yellow charge light should come on again as you've used a bit of power setting up.
Long press the power end button. The blue light is now on solid and the yellow too. Your computer should see it as a removable storage device. Navigate to the file you want in the DCIM folder on the camera memory and copy it to whichever folder you are going to use for your videos on your computer.
Try playing it using your chosen video playing software. I found the files played on my windows 7 pc with VLC 2 but not on my eeepc with the same software. With media Player Classic on the laptop it played but out of sync (probably looking for 25 frames/sec and getting 30)
Anyway there are clearly some issues with some computer/software combinations and now you are aware of it you can stop blaming the camera. I'm sure you will be able to find something that works for you.
I didn't use the HDMI lead. You can contact me by posting in a comment at rocketscientist.com.au if you have any useful contributions or just want to say hi or thanks.
The manual by the manufacturer says it has lights and lasers for framing of shots. The function buttons work for these modes but the lights and lasers are not present on this budget low weight model.
Thats about it. Happy Flying and good luck.
Norman McGeoch
TRA12957
Back to Rocket BitsBack to WWW.RocketScientist.com.au
Here you will find links to rocketry related bits I have personally used and like. If you buy these for your project you will save money because the research has already been done by me.
HD Wing Camera II – Full HD 1920x1080P 30FPSBlack Dog Rocketry run by Ron McGough.
An excellent place to go for information about hybrid rocket motors and ground support equipment for hybrids. Ron also manufactures launch controllers and can customise something for you. He helped me out immensly by consolidating all the rocket components I bought from around the US. This really reduced the total shipping cost to Australia. He is a good bloke to have a chat to about hybrids. You can find his phone number on the contact page at WWW.BlackDogRocketry.com
Back to WWW.RocketScientist.com.au
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
