Sunday, November 18, 2007

Composite motor class

I took part in a composite motor class this past weekend. The class was taught by Dave Reese and was conducted at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site. The class was a lot of fun and full of lots of useful information. Dave is currently a student a USC and I'm sure that he is very busy but despite this he did a great job organizing and conducing the class. The motor that we prepped propellant for was based on standard high powered rocketry hardware of which I have none, so I made some hardware based on drawings that I found on the Loki Research website. The hardware worked really well; I like the simplicity of the Loki design. Here is a video of the class motor that I static tested, I didn't have any instrumentation partly because I didn't want to risk any equipment on untested hardware and a propellant that I don't have much experience with, but mostly because I've been so busy lately that I just didn't have time to get anything together in time. The design/propellant is pretty well characterized though. The thrust produced should have been in the neighborhood of 90lbs with and Isp of around 185-190.






The Paul Breeds of Unreasonable Rocket were also at the site. Paul senior was flying an RC helicopter loaded with telemetry to gain information for their Lunar Lander Challenge quest.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looking good, wish I could have been there.

Regards,
Magnus