NPL Water Rocket Challenge, 2001
I stumbled across the NPL Water Rocket Challenge web site by chance while looking for something else and we decided that it was such a daft idea that we really had to have a go! The problem was that we only had about ten days before the competition so rocket shown is the result of not many hours' work.
This rocket was flown as an unofficial Met Office/M.R.F. entry at the competition in July 2001 (picture from an NPL press release). In the foreground the author pumps like blazes while his faithful ground crew waits to remove the safety pin from the launch mechanism (which looks suspiciously like a piece of old shower hose and a couple of bent bicycle spokes). I should mention that I know rather more about what happens when a 2 l fizzy pop bottle bursts than I did then and now always wear goggles and ear defenders. We managed a range of 134.7 m in our first flight and were hopeful of getting rather further than that but an unfortunate incident involving a tree slowed us down! Fortunately we hit branches rather than the trunk, so the rocket was not a total write-off, although it did require some fairly significant repairs. Below: launch.
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Movie clip of flight  |
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