VidRoc Flights

by Jamie Clay, LUNAR#1083

Sunday, January 20, was an interesting morning, to say the least. We launched "into" the sun from the morning shadows that draped across our local field. In all the footage from today, you'll see the sun’s rays hit the rockets as they climb. I flew four systems; 2 flew perfectly, 2 crashed. Got footage from all 4 flights BUT only 2.5 were worthy of posting (if that).

Anyway, here's a quick log of today's events:

Cineroc 2001 - I've actually been flying this for a little while now but only recently got off my butt to post the footage. So, on the site you'll see the first two flights. . Today's launch, well it was the one that wasn't worthy of posting on the site at all.

It's too bad because the rocket had one of the best flights of the morning. What was the problem with the video? Bad batteries (sigh). I'm not sure but one must have been a dud, that happens.

I wasn't watching the recording monitor (lesson learned) so I didn't notice the problem until I went to review the footage. Too bad too because this was the first flight using a dual antenna system on the transmitter, would have been nice to see if it worked.

Vidroc 1 - the booster was resurrected from the crash last year in Roswell. Don't know what I was thinking, flew it on a D9-4 and it wasn't high enough for the ejection delay (5 seconds). I’m about to ad a magnetic apogee detector to prevent that from happening again.

Anyway, like the very first Vidroc, in nosed in but because the ground was soft, damage was far less than what you might expect. The footage is pretty nice. I love the smoke at launch but of course would have been nicer if it had recovered under chute. Also note; for some reason the system didn't transmit audio, so I added commentary to the video.

Vidroc 3 - I redesigned the booster, "improved" the recovery system and STILL it failed. The ejection charge on the E17 is so harsh it blew the recovery system apart (again) BUT the back-up "tumble recovery" system worked. Damage once again was minor - go figure, someone up there likes me. As for the video, for some reason there was SO MUCH spin on the flight it looks like it spun the batteries loose, at least enough to kill the transmitter. The short video from this flight is kind of cool, especially the half speed footage of the fiery launch.

Vidroc Eye - flying on the smallest platform I think can loft this camera, not pretty but it was a good test of this configuration and this flight yielded some fun footage. The D12-3 on the small 3 fined booster had no trouble getting this system high enough for a clean recovery.

Next time I won’t have the mirror hood on the "down side" of the recovery, near the end of the flight footage you can hear me groaning to try and catch it - but I missed by just a few feet. No big deal, it wasn’t damaged even with the mirror first landing.

Well, there you go, enjoy the videos themselves at www.VideoRocketry.com.

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