Friday March 4, as well as last Saturday, the 11th, we launched our 1/3 scale rocket with a D and E motor respectively. We meant to have our altimeter ready for our launch last Saturday, but our technical problems thwarted those plans (by the way, I meant to get a picture of it before I gave it to my other team members, but I forgot; I'll get a picture of it later). Hopefully we'll have it ready in time for the next launch of our 1/2 scale rocket. To solve some of the problems with our last rocket, we attached the fins directly to the body, made the motor housing one solid piece, and distributed the weight in the rocket so it would be more stable in flight. I also painted it, so it looks much cooler than our last rocket.

Here's a picture of our 1/3 scale rocket:

We launched on the 4th with a D motor, and it went relatively well, but we accidentally made our rocket over stable. This means that when the rocket tilts slightly in the air, it over corrects making the rocket corkscrew slightly in flight. You can kind of see it as it goes up into the air.

Here the video of our launch with the D motor:

On the 11th we launched our rocket with an E motor. It's much more powerful than the D motor; I took a picture of the scorch marks from the motor so you could compare it to the marks from the D motor in one of my old posts. My other team mates took a picture of this to prove to campus rec that we don't screw up their fields with our launches (their fields have bald patches anyway).

On another note, we'll need to build a new launch pad for our larger sized motors, because this one isn't going to cut it anymore. We're also going to have to use a rail instead of a rod for our rockets, because they'll be bigger and that's also what they use in the competition we'll be entering. The launch pad will be our next project, along with brainstorming for the 10 lb payload we'll have to have (we're not currently sold on our Geiger counter idea).

Our rocket launched wonderfully for our E motor. The only thing we'll have to change for this size of rocket is our parachute. Currently we're using a small orange plastic parasheet (that's what a parachute with no gores is called) we got from a rocket kit, and it's a little too small for the rocket, and it's beginning to get some burn marks and tiny holes in it. We'll probably just cut another slightly larger parasheet out of our nylon material we have.

Here's a video of our launch with the E motor:

The only problem with we had with our E motor was that it melted the plastic on our engine housing and the engine refused to come out. Our engine housing is 3D printed, so it's just a matter of using different plastic to print with, which will be a simple fix for next time.