The Rocket Car
During December of 2002, on one of those occasions that I was in the most humble southern town of Reading, I happened across a maplin style electronics store. We were looking for some sort of fairy lights, I walked out with an RC Monster Truck under the pretence of it being a gift for Chrisy. Within hours of the purchace I had decided that the car was not enough, it should really be rocket powered, and so was born the idea of the Rocket Powered RC Car. Click on the images for larger versions.
Here you can see my fine purchace. After getting back to pauls the first thing I did was to 'test' it (wouldn't want to give someone a broken toy for xmas), this involved myself and dave rolling it in the street a few times and Martin driving full speed into Daves slightly less fragile Hyundai. I cunningly disguised any damage with polish and repackaged it with two sets of rocket motors and a 3 pack of crayola which I gained from pizza hut.
Chrisy was naturally delighted with his gift, he was given a week and a half to play with it while we were in edinburgh for new year, as on our return we would be setting it up for launch.
We returned from Edinburgh, drank lots of wine passed out and started work early next morning. Unfortunatly a day long powercut not only caused all the work to be man powered it also left us 1 camera down, and with no power in the truck. We decided to go ahead anyway.
Here you can see the results of a lot of sawing glueing and precise engineering on the part of myself, Dave and Paul as Chrisy and Mark were still in bed. This is a rear view of two D cell rocket motors mounted on the truck, note the precise cutout and mounting bracket.
Once rockets were in place and agreed satisfactory all that was required were some additional features and a way to ingnite and we could go, the addidtional feature of this run was to be my pressie from santa, a swat guy who came fully laden with everthing from an M40 to a spade. In unfortunate circumstaces for the swat guy I had also recieved this christmas, a bb gun so he had to have a relacement head glued on as well as many of his other body parts.
All clear to go, Chrisy and Mark were up and ready, the Car was good to go. For the launching system it was decided to trail a length of wire to someone holding a 9 volt battery, since the car would start stationary this seemed suitable. Other supplies were spare cableties, more rockets and naturally some candy necklaces.
A Quick picture I took in the car on the way to our launch site, Martin airfield. The airfield is a disused WW2 raf airstrip wich is now part used as a backroad between Martin and Metheringham, mostly people go there to teach there kids how to drive, or to race.
On arrival we had to wait for Andy and Elly who were coming to spectate, so we took a few scenic shots of the car on the airstrip, one day with the right planning I'd like to see it dissapear into the distance.
Launching the thing turned out to be quite a hassle, at first their were boy racers with their mini's and corsas to wait for. Then there was an issue with the 9 volt battery not being enough to ignite the motors. Part of this was probably down to the incredibly poor wire we were using the other part the incredibly cheap battery. In the end we poped the hood of Daves trusty Hyundai and used it's battery, this worked.
The first Launch was a cautious single B cell, barly enough to push the thing 4 meters or so, fortunatly it was only supposed to be cautious, the second run we decided was to use two beefy D cells. We all huddled into the car as Dave strapped the rockets in place and I decided it a good idea to tape my mission camera to the top, in hindsight...
The Second launch was spectacular if technically not very successful. The car shot off, accelerated to around 20 mph or so before fliping into the air, landing upside down (on my camera) and spinning violently for the next few seconds, during the spin everyone had the same reaction of 'what if it stops spinning and starts coming back at us' during the panic dave managed to take a great shot of his foot, and unfortunatly due to the impact the video of my cam did not get stored.
Third and forth runs took a single D and two B cells respectivly, the single D was the most 'sucsessful' run we had eventually pulling right and flipping about 3 times, the pulling to the right seems to be a feature of the car we need to iron out before the next trials. The video can be seen here.
Rocketcar video 1 - divx 120k approx.
The last run using two B cells was fairly unspectacular aside from the very smokey pops from the ejections charges, here are the videos from the end of the first run, and the last run.
Rocketcar video 2 - divx 130k approx.
Rocketcar video 3 - divx 235k approx.
Lastly I thought I should take a picture of what I have left of my gift from santa. guess we'll be needing a new pilot for the next run.
Chrisy was naturally delighted with his gift, he was given a week and a half to play with it while we were in edinburgh for new year, as on our return we would be setting it up for launch.
Here you can see the results of a lot of sawing glueing and precise engineering on the part of myself, Dave and Paul as Chrisy and Mark were still in bed. This is a rear view of two D cell rocket motors mounted on the truck, note the precise cutout and mounting bracket.
Once rockets were in place and agreed satisfactory all that was required were some additional features and a way to ingnite and we could go, the addidtional feature of this run was to be my pressie from santa, a swat guy who came fully laden with everthing from an M40 to a spade. In unfortunate circumstaces for the swat guy I had also recieved this christmas, a bb gun so he had to have a relacement head glued on as well as many of his other body parts.
All clear to go, Chrisy and Mark were up and ready, the Car was good to go. For the launching system it was decided to trail a length of wire to someone holding a 9 volt battery, since the car would start stationary this seemed suitable. Other supplies were spare cableties, more rockets and naturally some candy necklaces.
A Quick picture I took in the car on the way to our launch site, Martin airfield. The airfield is a disused WW2 raf airstrip wich is now part used as a backroad between Martin and Metheringham, mostly people go there to teach there kids how to drive, or to race.
On arrival we had to wait for Andy and Elly who were coming to spectate, so we took a few scenic shots of the car on the airstrip, one day with the right planning I'd like to see it dissapear into the distance.
Launching the thing turned out to be quite a hassle, at first their were boy racers with their mini's and corsas to wait for. Then there was an issue with the 9 volt battery not being enough to ignite the motors. Part of this was probably down to the incredibly poor wire we were using the other part the incredibly cheap battery. In the end we poped the hood of Daves trusty Hyundai and used it's battery, this worked.
The first Launch was a cautious single B cell, barly enough to push the thing 4 meters or so, fortunatly it was only supposed to be cautious, the second run we decided was to use two beefy D cells. We all huddled into the car as Dave strapped the rockets in place and I decided it a good idea to tape my mission camera to the top, in hindsight...
The Second launch was spectacular if technically not very successful. The car shot off, accelerated to around 20 mph or so before fliping into the air, landing upside down (on my camera) and spinning violently for the next few seconds, during the spin everyone had the same reaction of 'what if it stops spinning and starts coming back at us' during the panic dave managed to take a great shot of his foot, and unfortunatly due to the impact the video of my cam did not get stored.
Lastly I thought I should take a picture of what I have left of my gift from santa. guess we'll be needing a new pilot for the next run.