NPL Water Rocket Challenge, 2003
Resting on laurels is not recommended...
I had not actually done anything since 2002 and so the only preparation was some rather cursory repairs to the rockets that came back from NPL and the construction of another to provide us with three for the competition. I did make a larger parachute and adapt the camera section to carry a small digital camera, but did not carry out any flight tests.
Results
Not our finest hour, really; none of the parachutes deployed. This was rather a pity as, in theory, we could have achieved a very competitive time but as it was our best flight was just under nine seconds, securing ninth place out of sixteen teams in the open competition. The only redeeming aspects are that I am fairly sure we achieved a greater altitude than anyone else and the third placed RAF Digby team were using a design that looked rather familiar. Full results here; it was nice to see a much closer competition than in 2002.
Post Mortem
I believe the failures stemmed from the speed of the rocket when the parachute was triggered. In 2002 this occurred when the rocket was probably travelling at a comparatively sedate 8 ms-1, whereas in 2003, with the maximum elevation at launch constrained to 60°, the speed will have been around 20 ms-1. I suspect that either the tension in the rubber band that was intended to knock the nose off was insufficient, and that with the rocket travelling at a higher speed (an hence being more stable) the drag on the nose was insufficient to fully extract the drogue on the occasion that it did come off.
Pictures
 Rockets on launcher |
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 launch sequence |
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 Launch pad camera MPEG 445 kb |
 Large parachute doing what it didn't do in flight. |
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