Was a great day of launching rockets. Helped a few with their L1 Cert’s. Sorry to Martin that it was lost to the corn – I know how much that sucks as I lost my original weasel to the corn.
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So I finally managed to make it to a launch AND fly a rocket. It has been a few crazy busy couple of months for sure!
The skies leading up to the event were looking a bit unfavourable, but the skies cleared for one great launch!
I flew the Binder Design Excel in it’s standard configuration on a good ole H220 Blue Thunder – man I love that motor! It looks like I drilled the perfect amount of delay off too.
It turned out to be a fantastic launch with MANY great launches, and Simon being the first person in Queensland to successfully fly a rocket on a Contrail hybrid rocket motor. Well done on a great flight mate! Also other notable flights were Dean’s Hercules on L2200, Ari’s Intimidator 4 on K540, Nic’s fantastic flight of his “Baby” Sledgehammer on J570 and lastly Wayne’s unfortunate failed L2 attempt on the Contrail K Hybrid.
Anyway, onto the bit you’re all chasing…. the photos…
Okay, I know some of you have been hanging out for the pics from the recent QRS launch. So here they are.
I got a decent amount of photos this time as I decided to just go along and enjoy the day.
It all started off for me at 5am on Thursday when Len picked me up on the way to Georges place where we would get a lift to the airport. We got there much earlier than expected as there was far less traffic on the gateway than we assumed there would be. At the airport we spotted Nic and his brother William who also arrived bright and early.
After the LONG flight to Perth from Brisbane, Len and George sorted out their hire car, booked into their hotel and made our way to Scoops home to meet up with the rest of the guys. From there we dropped into the Whooshtronics pre-launch party after grabbing some “angry juice”. It was a great evening and was great to see the Whooshtronics HQ in action and to learn how this level of electronics manufacturing is done.
Friday morning we started getting all of the gear together and eventually our crate full of rockets, tents and sleeping bags arrived (nothing like the last minute  guess). We then made our way to the launch site once we were all packed up. When we arrived some of the site had already been set up. After a short rain shower we then finished setting up the site and set up our tents. That evening I truly found out exactly how cold it would be at night!!!
In the morning after breakfast everyone jumped into getting their rockets ready and started launching. I decided to hold off on launching my Intimidator 3 until after lunch, and Neil kindly lent me his 70-200mm F4 USM Lens as it is FAR better than my dodgy little 55-250mm F4-5.6 EF-S Lens. That was hugely appreciated! After lunch I prepped my Intimidator 3 and launched in on a J350. It was a perfect flight straight up, backslid a few feet and the altimeter kicked in and ejected the drogue and after PK’s “perfect” guess at 700 feet the main came out. Everyone though I had become an admiral in the navy, but it had landed just the other side of the dam. After then I cleaned it up and decided to just watch the rockets being launched rather than photographing them (the worst thing with taking the photos is that it is very difficult to “take in” the launches fully.
Sunday started off a little “slower”, probably due to the amount of alcohol consumed the previous evening. However after a good hearty breakfast the launching started up again. Eventually the drag race was ready and the competition got a little more heated. The WA teams rocket (White Trash) left the pad first leaving the Qld team behind. Then whilst White Trash was doing a little dancing across the sky the Qld teams rocket left it for dead and hitting apogee first! I personally wouldn’t call it a win either way as the WA team was off the pad first but the Qld team beat it to the line. After apogee things went a little pear shaped for both teams. The WA team popped its main at apogee while the Qld teams chute didn’t fully open and it fell into a tree very hard, although with minimal damage. After getting some photos of Pinkhat and Simon setting up their Mach Madness rocket I decided to go and assist with the recovery. After driving around following the tracker we finally got to the last paddock that Dave could drive us to so we took it on foot from there. After walking for a while following the tracker Simon spotted the sustainer, and after a little more searching we found the nosecone nearby. The altimeter reported about 18,000ft! We walked back trying to beat sundown and found our way back. Later in the evening we downloaded the data from the Raven2 that was on board and got a top speed of a massive Mach 2.64!!! Any wonder I missed the photo of it taking off!
Monday morning was a matter of all-in packing up. After a great flight back with Blake and Petar, we were home and it was all over! Time to start building a project for next years event!
I must say a huge thanks to Tripoli Western Australia for hosting such a great event. To Dave and Mel for inviting me into their home and their support throughout the event, thanks guys. Big thanks for PK for doing a great job of RSO/LCO (sorry I didn’t get a chance to take over from you mate!), and also for hosting the Whooshtronics party – I will add your site to my links shortly now that I think of it. Also thanks to Neil for lending me the 70-200mm lens, and to Drew for lending me the motor case (sorry your AMRAAM didn’t work out so well for you!). Also to all of the sponsors of this great event, without you I am sure this event wouldn’t quite be what it is.
Lastly, thanks for Blake from Australian Rocketry for supporting me and encouraging me to come along to this great event! You truly are a top bloke mate! Without you, this hobby in Australia wouldn’t be what it is today!
I know you’re all hankering for the photos, so here they are…
To herald my trip to Perth WA, and onto Williams in WA for Tripoli WA’s annual premium rocketry weekend I have decided to commence a multi-part blog for the trip.
So aside from packing my bags (the packing list is however done, so I shouldn’t forget anything); I am now ready for the 2011 Williams ‘Wildfire’ Westernationals Launch!!! An man am I excited! Even the appropriately disturbing moustache is well in the making!
I will be launching the Performance Rocketry Intimidator 3 on something J over there (probably a ye-olde faithful J350), this will make it the Intimidator 3′s maiden flight. Unfortunately funds (and somewhat laziness) has hindered the paint job somewhat; but on the other hand, paint only adds weight! So in the meantime it will be suitably dubbed “Nude Intimidation” (in jest of the “Nude Weasel”).
The rest of Nude Intimidation is already headed to (or at) Perth, so the best I can do is give a photo of the finished AV bay that I will be taking in my luggage to WA.
Intimidator 3 AV Bay Completed
Although it was a bit windy to start off with it died down after a while. Regardless, some great flights were had by all those that were happy to give it a shot. I personally wasn’t keen on it as I figured I haven’t got a great deal of motors left and am not too keen on loosing rockets.
So in place of launching I decided to assist with setting up on the launch pad and taking photos.
And in the words of Krusty “click to embiggen”
Thanks to Australian Rocketry I finally have my altimeter. It is the Raven2 from Featherweight Altimeters.
There are several factors that drew me to the Raven2 over the other options, these include:
Here is my final AV Bay sled configured and just about ready to go.
Onto the second portion of my post. I have finally made some real progress on the Intimidator (so it appears you cannot stop progress but you can certainly slow it down a heck of a lot!).
I have done the last few fillets onto the motor tube, then I have epoxied the entire fin can into position in the rocket. I was going to do internal fillets from the fin to the inside of the body tube however I have decided that this is probably overkill as the fillets to the motor mount are decent size anyway.
Next thing up is to sand and fill the fillets to get them nice and smooth, then onto the paint job.
So I was too slack to launch again on Sunday… Partly because I was late due to my poor wife being up sick for a lot of the night.
Anyway, I know you are all just hankering for photos. I must apologise, I normally try and shoot at 1/2000 on shutter priority but for some reason I shot at 1/1000 so they are not quite as sharp as I like. I did however use my polarising filter which has made the sky come out as a beautiful bright blue.
Although I didn’t launch anything myself it was such a fantastic day! I am down to a small handful of motors so I had decided to help out with the Linux conf guys rather than burn up all my motors when there is another launch in about 2 weeks.
It was great to meet Bdale Garbee who is one of the designers of the Altus Metrum which is a dual deploy rocketry altimeter and GPS with RF link in a single (very compact) unit. It is truly an awesome piece of electronics, and if my budget allowed me to buy one I would have one in a pinch! In the meantime I will need to settle for the planned purchase of the Featherweight Raven 2.
There were many launches on the day, with what appears to be a majority in the G range from the Linux conf guys.
I must finish with a HUGE congratulations to Shirley for obtaining both L1 and L2 on the day with perfectly successful flights! Well done mate! So when will the L3 happen? In 2 weeks? 
I am sure you are all hankering for photos, so here they are.
I went out yesterday afternoon when my internet went down (I have been working from home). I had seen some photos earlier from the top of the Goodna water tower, so we decided to check it out from up there. I got some photos which I will upload later, but in the meantime here is the video I took of a Blackhawk around Goodna and Wacol.
Rocketry Planet
