SClub or Member Projects and Rocket Ideas:
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Club Grant - NAR Safety Grant: PA System
Grant Type
– Range operations equipment.
Safety problem – We need a PA system that can be heard all over our field to provide rocket launch announcements, safety warnings, and crowd control. Our current PA system is not sufficient enough to provide loud enough audio announcements/warnings beyond a small distance.
We have a field at a Naval Auxiliary Airbase in Chesapeake, VA. For a PA
system we only have a small one speaker system that is not loud enough
or omnidirectional to adequately cover this field. When we have a large
event we rent a PA system that is very costly and it would quickly drain
all our funds if we had to rent it on a regular basis. I have been to
several other Clubs and most of them do not have omnidirectional
speakers. The speakers are usually facing the launch audience but you
cannot hear the announcer if you are out on the field. This proposed PA
system will have dual four speakers systems that will face all four
directions and have a strong amplifier.
For this Grant we would purchase
a complete outdoor PA system that would have sufficient power and be
omnidirectional. The system would also have wireless microphones for
other officers to make any safety alerts while out in the field. We have
saved up Club funds and will receive additional donations to cover the
additional amount beyond the Grant limit.
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Idea - Easily exchangeable altimeters. -
Do not want to have to
continually disassemble the electronics bay to service the altimeter or
to swap it over to a different diameter rocket. I'm trying to develop a
"standard" quick-change mount for altimeters, at least for my rockets. I
use the Raven 2 so, I'm looking at building around that. I am thinking
about mounting the electronics in a small coupler (24mm, 29mm, 38mm,
...) so it could be slipped into a motor mount with a motor retainer to
hold it in place. The charges would be attached to each end and stick
out the either end of the motor mount tube. You'd prepare the altimeter
tube buy attaching the charges, slip it in the rocket, secure the
retainer, and go fly it.
> > I'm a bit worried that this sort of mount might not stand up to the
ejection charge pressure and end up blowing through. I guess I could use
a motor block on the other end of the motor tube without the retainer to
hold it in place. I'd also like to do this without a costly retainer (Aeropac,
...) and again, am worried about the mechanical strength of the
alternatives. There would be other bits of this design to standardize,
keyed rotational alignment, slots or holes to allow the free flow of air
from the outside, connectors to charge the battery without disassembling
the unit, use of a magnet for ON/OFF switching, and such. Those should
be easy (Raven altimeter bays implement a couple of these already).
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Project - Build a four stage rack rocket for D motors.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________Club Project - Launch Tower
Project - Build a large launch tower with a 1515 rail and uni-struct
rail for launching large rockets.___________________________________________________________________________________
Idea - Launch Controller:
Project - To build a relay launch controller with extra safety and indicator features.
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Idea - Cable Tower:
Project - Build a cable tower.
A cable tower is a tower made out of pipes that hold the cabling for the
igniters. The advantage is that the cabling can be near the motor,
hopefully protected, and have a strong secure method of attaching the
wires._____________________________________________________________________________________________
Club Project - Ten Pad, Low Power, Launcher:
Project - Build a 10 pad,
low power, launcher out of PVC piping to support large events like the
Boy Scout launch._____________________________________________________________________________________________
Club Project - Two Stage HPR:
Project
- Build a two stage high power rocket to learn high power staging techniques._____________________________________________________________________________________________
Club Grant - NAR Safety Grant: Welding Blankets for Fire Prevention
From the Grant application:
Brief description of the safety problem that you
are trying to solve:
Occasionally we have small fires due to
the dry grass on our field. We quickly put out these fires with a water
sprayer and several people stomping on the flames but we would like to
stop these fires from forming at all. We cannot rake back a dirt area
because we cannot disturb our owner’s grass field. As an idea, we could
blanket a large enough area around the launch pads with fire protection
shields such as a welding blanket/shield to prevent the sparks from
hitting the grass. These welding shields range in size from 3’x4’ to
6’x9’. They could also be made to a custom size. Their temperature
protection range goes from 1000F to 1800F. See –
http://steelguardsafety.com/welding-blankets.htm
For this grant we would purchase several different types and document the results. If this is successful this might be a new method of controlling fires at the source. This particularly would be good for sparky type motors since these welding blankets are made for that type of spark.
Status - Blankets have prevented fires around the
pads however some sparks go 15 to 20 feet and can still cause a fire
outside the blanket area.
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Club Project - Warp Drive Rocket:
Plan - To build a
rocket that would simulate a rocket going into "Warp Drive". The rocket
would first go up slowly on two motors and then around 150', two powerful motors would
ignite and the rocket would take off in 'Warp Drive'. Update -
Rocket was destroyed on first flight.Jeff Goldstein - Princess Anne Middle School - Panther Rocket
May 7, 2010 launch of Panther 6 on a M1315W.
Jun. 6, 2009 launch on a M class motor at Fentress Field.
Jim Morgan - Redneck Rocket
Flew
well.
Jim Morgan - Custom Made Launch Pad
Randy Regan - Level II Project
Randy Regan - Mach Buster 38MM Project
Build a rocket that can go faster than Mach 1. This
rocket is a modified version of the Transonic kit. Rocket name - Mach
Buster 38MM.
Update - Rocket was lost at Red Glare 8.
Randy Regan - Astro GPS
Add a Garmin Astro GPS system to track a rocket's flight.Team Cutting - Rapid Prototyping of Rocket Parts
Use a rapid prototyping machine to build rocket parts. A local technical school has a rapid prototyping machine and a nose cone was made with this machine.
Nose cone made with the rapid prototyping system.Idea - Use a color ink jet printer to print out tube wraps with unlimited patterns and colors.
Here are some examples:
Projects/images/space-background.pdf,
Projects/images/engines.pdf, Projects/images/shooting-star.pdf
Idea - Parasail Recovery - Rocketglide
The current best idea for recovery is dual deployment recovery. However,
on windy days, we sometimes watch our rockets land
in trees or faraway places. What if we could control our recovery path?
I have seen skydivers land anywhere they want, in fact, right in a
planned ten foot area. So, maybe we could add a R/C controlled parachute
that has control lines that we steer just like the skydivers’
parachutes. I know it would be difficult to get the parachute out and
not tangle the many lines with everything else but that would be part of
the challenge. Maybe a small chute could come out first to get all the
lines straight and then the controlled chute could then open up. You
could also set these chutes to come out at apogee and have it first go
into a small circular spiral to get it down fast. Then, as it comes in
closer you could take control for the rest of the flight. We could call
these “Rocketglide” chutes.[This was tried by Brian Wells and Henry Muller at NERRF 2005 without success.]
Autonomous precision airdrop system - http://www.atair.com/onyx/
University of Alabama is going to try this idea. Look at - http://sites.google.com/site/chargerrocketworks/home
Idea – Exchangeable fin cans.
Extend the exchangeable motor case idea to fin cans. The fin can would slide into a grooved and slotted retainer ring mounted on the body tube and another fin can retainer ring would be on the bottom of the body tube. A retainer cap would be then screwed into the bottom retainer ring to lock the fin can in place much like a motor mount is locked into place. So, depending on the weather conditions for the day, windy or not, you could try different fin configurations – 3 or 4 fin, small or large, swept or straight, etc. Also, if a fin gets damaged you could replace it easily.
Idea
- Inverted Piston
Pistons are a great way to separate the hot gases from the recovery
equipment. Pistons are located near the ejection charge at the bottom of
the body tube. So, pistons can sometimes bind within the long tube due
to temperature differences and grime that will cause friction. The main
purpose of the ejection charge is to separate the two halves and to also
push the upper part away to pull out the parachute. So, what if you
inverted the piston and put it at the top of the body tube rather than
at the bottom. The piston would be stopped from going down into the tube
by resting the piston on top of a small coupler that has been glued down
inside of the tube. The avionics bay would go on top of the inverted
piston and slid into the body tube as normally done. When the ejection
charge goes off the two halves are separated and the piston is also
pulled out with the shock cord from the ejection force. The advantage of
this method is now you only have a small volume to expand, using smaller
charges. The piston will still separate the hot gases from the recovery
equipment. Also, you should be able to retrofit most rockets with this
idea. I might not have explained this very well so I will build a
prototype and post some pictures.