Launch Report for January 16, 1995

Images

On Martin Luther King Day 1995 UASEDS made a successful launch of Kludge I and Brant II. These model rockets are a prelude to SEDS soon-to-be constructed High Powered Rocket.

Aboard the very experimental design of Kludge I was a data logger with a pressure gauge and thermometer. Kludge I was a common sense design and since it would never reach any incredible speeds, no major calculations were attempted in the design. The data logger was the main purpose of this launch to give it a good region of acceleration and altitude to use its sensors. The thermometer was not used; deciding that given the time and only one data input, the pressure gauge would only be used on this flight. The next launch schedule in the first week of February will test both the thermometer and pressure gauge.

Kludge I lifted off from a very improvised launch pad and firing system with a slight inclination of flight to the south. The motor was a Aerotech F50-4 giving us 50 newtons of thrust in 1.6 seconds providing an impulse of 31.25 N/s.

After the thrust duration, the rocket did a hammerhead due to the weight of the instruments (something that needs to be fixed for better performance next time). With a four second delay time, the ejection charge ejected the nose cone and parachutes and burned the shock cord sending the nose cone with instruments into the dessert. The body tube landed hard against the ground but only damaged the SEDS logo! The nose cone with the instruments and the parachutes on the other hand was lost in the dessert for two and a half hours until by accident one of us almost step on it coming back from the search.

Upon examining the instruments, the pressure gauge and thermometer board were cracked from the 9V battery during the flight. A better packing scheme must be established for future flights. Chris Greene

Flight Report

Almost one full year after the conception of the data logger, we successfully gathered 4 minutes worth of flight data during this flight of Kludge 1. The SEDS data logger is a general purpose electronics device. It is designed to sample eight channels of data at a user selectable rate. Because of its general design the system may be interfaced to any array of instruments. Thus it may be used in a large scope of applications. It can be used to record temperature fluctuations over a month to micro-timing samples of a complex system.

After the data is recorded the board is interfaced to a computer via a standard parallel port. The data is offloaded and saved for immediate, or future analysis.

With both 8Kbyte memory banks active, summing to a total of 16Kbytes, UASEDS was able to fill it at a sample rate of 64Hz.

Although the payload was originally scheduled to consist of both a 0-15psia pressure sensor and a temperature probe, only the pressure sensor was used to sample data.

This time-line for the flight can be used in conjunction with the data file to interpolate exact times at which events occurred. A copy of the data file may be obtained at SEDS' Rocketry Pages

APPROX. MAX ALTITUDE: 260ft 
APPROX. AVG. VELOCITY: 130ft/s
TIMELINE: 
(Seconds) 
T+0 Begin sampling 
T+2.1 Insert nose cone 
T+20 Lift-off 
T+22 End motor burn 
T+25 Apogee - 
System Failure
T+84 Impact
T+2.5 Hours - 
System recovered
Ric Zaller