Flight Log - Fiesta IslandI was tired and harried by the time I arrived. Kevin, Anita, Steve Palmer, Ron & Renee, and their neighbors had all come by to see the show. Thought I would get to fly SPRS today, after staying up nearly all night long building the rocket body, but didn't because the RC Radio didn't work. Turns out that I had one of the batteries turned upside down! My apologies to Kevin for making him run to the store (for what turned out to be bad batteries anyways), and thanks for going and getting the Arreaux on the longest run of the day! Had 3 good flights of the Aerraux today. Decided to try the Hi-Res movies at Apogee. Only one of the three potential movies came out ok. Got some good still pictures from that shot. Still have to do something about the chaotic motion (i.e. swivel on parachute). Also must remember to sleep before launches! Click HERE to see the 1.1 MByte MPG movie of flight #2 (Arreaux Rocket Cam #8 F23-7FJ) Flight #1 - Arreaux Rocket Cam #6 (F23-7FJ) I don't really remember too much about these flights. I was upset because SPRS-1's radio wasn't working, but I didn't want to dissapoint my friends who had come to see a launch. I rigged the Arreaux for apogee (ejection) triggering of the camera, put it on the launch pad, did the count down, and pressed the button .... oops ... I forgot to arm the camera, so, although it was a pretty good flight (a little spiraling), there was no movie made. The yellow parachute suffered a small burn ... I guess the ejection cooling system may need cleaning.
Flight #2 -
Arreaux Rocket Cam #7 (F23-7FJ)
This time (with Kevin's help) I remembered to arm the camera. Once again, set for a hi-res apogee (ejection) triggering. The flight was fairly straight and true, the rocket came down, I ran and got it, brought it back, downloaded the pictures/movies and considered it a success. The movie is very chaotic, can't tell up from down with the camera under chute (still my big problem!), but, even though the rocket didn't go as high as it did with the G40-10, there were some decent still photos retrieved from the movie: I think the higher res pictures (below) are much nicer than the low res ones. Compare them to the ones I took on 2001-01-27). Now if I could only smooth out the parachute ride! Here's a shot looking west at the little island between Fiesta Island and East Mission Beach. You can see the smoke trail of the Arreaux.< 
Did you ever wonder what's over the berm to the north of the launch area? Here's a picture of it from approx 1000 feet. 
Here's another shot of the west side of Fiesta Island. Doesn't the Arreaux's body look pretty in this shot? 
Here's probably the best shot of the day, another view of the Ingrham-Vacation Village bridge. The curvature is, unfortunately not the curve of the earth due to rocket altitude, but due to the cheap plastic lens in the camera. Oh well, it still looks pretty. 
Flight #3 - Oh Baby #4 (E15-7W) I flew Oh Baby on an E15-7W. It got comments from the peanut gallery as it was loaded up to fly. People like the big red lettering, I think. Kevin, Steve, and Ron all got to watch it fly it's first E engine. It flew about 400 feet up, and nearly as far laterally (behind the flight line). The long delay caused a breath holding wait for deployment which came normally, if a little late, about 150 feet off the ground. Note that on this flight I used a homemade parachute created from a green trash bag, masking tape, and string and it worked just fine. Oh Baby was one of the best flights of my day. Flight #4 - Arreaux Rocket Cam #8 (F50-6T) The last flight of the day for me was pretty nice. As I remember, the F50 took the Arreaux quite high (over 1000 ft). As the wind was picking up, the body landed slightly over the north berm. Thanks to Kevin for recovering it. Unfortunately, although the camera was armed, and appears to have filmed (something), it seems as though something happened to the camera during the flight. The movie is all a light/dark banded blurry mess. I think maybe the camera moved inside the rocket body, so that all I'm seeing is the out of focus image of the inside of the rocket body. Needless to say, there were no pictures worth posting from this flight. I'll have to do some testing to determine what went wrong with the camera. |