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The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Wed May 28, 2014 10:15 pm
by bugwubber
My daughter is having a water rocket competition at her school. They are provided with 16oz Pitsco bottles, clay weight, and construction paper for nose and fins.

Faced with the flimsy materials, I suggested she make a fringe skirt. And of course, we discussed adding plenty of clay.

She proposed it to her team and they agreed. So they built a rocket called The Yellow Hula Dancer. It danced on the way up and twirled around.

They achieved 28 meters with the 16oz bottle at 90psi and took first place so far. Second place hit 14 meters!
Needless to say, the kids were all shocked! Everyone will be allowed to make minor alterations to their rockets and launch again.

I have been invited to the school after the competition to do a fun launch. We will launch the rockets on the derby launcher for direct comparisons. And I will do a couple demonstration launches.

Which led me to make The Golden Eagle:
CAM01262.jpg
CAM01262.jpg (3.94 MiB) Viewed 72 times
This is the Modular Rocket I tested last fall plus some fancy posterboard and paint.

Using the USWR box fin. The bottles have pvc/bottle cap couplings so the entire rocket screws together. The idea was ti be able to easily add or remove bottles as needed.

And now about my personal record....

I made it all the way to the launch site.
I set up the launcher.
I set up the rocket.
I loaded the water into the rocket.
And only then, did I realize,

I forgot the air compressor.

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sat May 31, 2014 11:26 pm
by U.S. Water Rockets1
bugwubber wrote:My daughter is having a water rocket competition at her school. They are provided with 16oz Pitsco bottles, clay weight, and construction paper for nose and fins.

Faced with the flimsy materials, I suggested she make a fringe skirt. And of course, we discussed adding plenty of clay.

She proposed it to her team and they agreed. So they built a rocket called The Yellow Hula Dancer. It danced on the way up and twirled around.

They achieved 28 meters with the 16oz bottle at 90psi and took first place so far. Second place hit 14 meters!
Needless to say, the kids were all shocked! Everyone will be allowed to make minor alterations to their rockets and launch again.

I have been invited to the school after the competition to do a fun launch. We will launch the rockets on the derby launcher for direct comparisons. And I will do a couple demonstration launches.

Which led me to make The Golden Eagle:
CAM01262.jpg
This is the Modular Rocket I tested last fall plus some fancy posterboard and paint.

Using the USWR box fin. The bottles have pvc/bottle cap couplings so the entire rocket screws together. The idea was ti be able to easily add or remove bottles as needed.

And now about my personal record....

I made it all the way to the launch site.
I set up the launcher.
I set up the rocket.
I loaded the water into the rocket.
And only then, did I realize,

I forgot the air compressor.

Congratulations to your daughter on her best distance so far! She has a definite advantage over her classmates!

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 1:09 am
by bugwubber
The best part about it, she got to tell her classmates what the secret sauce was. Then they went back to make modifications to their rockets. She said the second launch, "didn't have any rockets that only went 8 meters high". Her second launch was 25 meters high with no changes. Second place closed the gap to 23 meters.

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 9:29 pm
by bugwubber
Here's a view of Golden Eagle and Best taken from an onboard video camera of Laissez Les Bon Temps Volent (aka Charlie Laser Pears). Best is very hard to see because it went much higher.

Oh and at the end, you can see the nosecone because I made a modification to LLBTV's ballast chamber which caused it to retain water. So it lawn darted.

[youtube][/youtube]

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:52 pm
by U.S. Water Rockets1
Who comes up with your rocket names?????

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2014 12:47 am
by bugwubber
U.S. Water Rockets1 wrote:Who comes up with your rocket names?????
All members of Team SPEW contribute on the names. Since that includes a number of children and two abnormally different adults, the results have been a lot of fun!

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 11:19 am
by rstaff3
I always get a kick out of coming up with weird and.or obscure names for my rockets. So far my water rockets have not been subjected to such ridicule. LOL.

BTW, what's up with the photo in post#2? All I see is the file name.

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 12:38 am
by bugwubber
rstaff3 wrote:I always get a kick out of coming up with weird and.or obscure names for my rockets. So far my water rockets have not been subjected to such ridicule. LOL.

BTW, what's up with the photo in post#2? All I see is the file name.
Not sure which you are talking about. If CAM01262.jpg, The reply from USWR just contains the ref to my pic in post 1.

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 12:59 am
by rstaff3
Oh, my bad. This forum apparently doesn't reinsert photos in replies...

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:04 pm
by U.S. Water Rockets1
rstaff3 wrote:Oh, my bad. This forum apparently doesn't reinsert photos in replies...
It can get annoying when forums put images in quotes because the indenting of the embedded quotes causes the screen to get wider and wider. I think they shut the feature off the keep that under control.

Re: The Golden Eagle and New Personal Record

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 1:14 am
by rstaff3
That is actually quite annoying...however of the half dozen forums I have visited regularly, this is the first that has done so.