SOUTH  EASTERN  VIRGINIA  ROCKETRY  ASSOCIATION

Club or Member Projects and Rocket Ideas:

 Club Project  - Two Stage HPR:  
Project - Build a two stage 54mm 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.
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
 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

 

Launched at LDRS 28, Jul. 4, 2009, Potter, NY
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.