The carbon fibre airframe arrived today for the airframe. It is 118ID 122OD, made from 50% axial 50% circumferential uni directional per-preg, with a working temperature of 180 degrees C. The manufacturing process uses spiral wound heat shrink trape, so the surface has been ground smooth to get rid of the spiral ridges. They’re still …
When the fins are bonded into the carbon fibre airframe, some extra carbon fibre will be laid up tip-to-tip to strengthen the fins. We wanted to practice doing this lay-up and make sure that the C-F fabric that we cut is the right shape, so we made a mockup of the fin can. A quick …
Martlet 1 has 3 stages, each stage having a motor section and a parachute section. Each parachute section holds two parachutes: a small spring pilot parachute that is deployed first, to allow the rocket to descend quickly so it doesn’t drift far in the wind, and a large parachute which is deployed near sea level, …
The Hedgehog flight computer is designed for tracking the 3-stages of the Martlet 1 rocket, when they are descending under parachute. The flight computer uses an Atmega 168, RadioMetrix 434MHz module and uBlox 6 GPS. Click here for more build photos.
The Martlet 1 rocket has fins that are made in two parts: the outside edge is machined aluminium to give a high temperature, sharp leading edge, which it will need at Mach 2. The inside of the fin is made of carbon fibre honeycomb, to be strong and light. The fin sections were first cut …
Last Sunday, CUSF took our new rocket to EARS. We launched it twice, on an H143 and an H225 motor, and recovered it okay both times! All the photos are on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuspaceflight/sets/72157628282044955/ Some highlights: Hopefully we’ll be launching two new rockets and this one a few more times next EARS meeting!
Nearly done soldering up this very prototype-y payload for the rocket on Sunday. It’s got a GPS (FSA03) being transmitted over an XBee (Series 2B, pro, 50mW) while at the same time an ADXL345 accelerometer is logged to an SD card on the OpenLog. All powered by a tiny little LiPo battery. It’s pretty neat! …
The latest rocket is all painted! We’ve gone for a metallic blue on the fins and nosecone and matt black for the body. This should be launching on Sunday from EARS — our first rocket launch in quite a while! Stay tuned for details on an experimental telemetry payload we’re putting together as fast as …
Further work rocket today — nearly all done now! Just gotta paint the thing and sort out a payload…
On Sunday we started putting together the first of the new kit rockets and now we’re waiting for epoxy to dry before we move on to the next stage.
