September 11, 1999
Launch

This was the first launch of my 35mm logging camera rocket.

There were many firsts for this flight.

•     First time launching the altimeter(actually there were two test flights but neither one worked).
•     First time film has been run through the camera, and developed.
•     First time the Rockets booster section  has been used.
•     First time I used the software with real data.

As you can see there where many unknowns and I expected to run into some hitches along the way.

The flight went well on a G80-4, The rocket is just over 2 lb so I expected to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 feet up, it was hard to simulate because I didnt know what effect the mirror would have on the flight.

Recovery was fine. Although someone recovered it for me and was not going to give it back to me because they thought it was their husbands camera rocket becuase his name was also Robert. That was funny. Anyway I degress.

When I inspected the rocket I found an impact mark just above the camera section in the payload bay. It seemed the booster section impacted the payload bay with one of its fins.

I downloaded the data and found that the data stopped being logged at just over 600 feet. It looked as though I had old data from one of my tests after that point.

I suspected that the impact had disabled the altimeter. I hoped the camera had taken its pictures ok but I was unable to rewind the camera. The batteries were dead. I replaced them but it still would not rewind. That means I would have to wait till I got home to open the camera and that I would not get another flight in.

When I developed the film there were 27 pictures from a 24 exp roll. I guess the camera never shut down due to the failure of the altimeter. You see the altimeter is supposed to stop the camera after it takes 24 pictures.

I was excited to see the pictures came out. The first one I saw had a parachute in it. The pictures would have been better if the camera had a faster shutter speed but what can I expect for a $20 camera. Next I need to figure out how to seperate the sections so the camera comes down taking pictures straight down instead of pretty pictures of the parachute.

GALLERY- Well here is a link to the pictures. There are 24 pictures on this page. Each has a thumbnail image of about 3k each.

Here are some of my favorite pictures.

Pic1 20 feet

Pic2 272 feet

Pic9 684 feet

Pic21 624 feet

Look closely at picture 2, thats me in the red shirt in the lower right corner. Now hows that for photography. Now I just need to find that picture of me from my rastrocam so I can post it.

One thing that was not right was that the program was listing the altituedes all shifted my one. Meaning that picture one was reported as 272(actually 252)feet and picture 2 was reported as 684(664) feet. I think something went wrong with the ground reference that gets subtracted from the actual reading becuase by my crude calculations Picture one was taken from about 20 feet because you can see the leg of the launcher there in the picture and the fin is sticking out of the rocket 3 in and is 14.5 in from the lens. If anyone can verify the altitude of picture 2 by calculating the size of the people that would be great.

I also had a chance to fly my rebuilt HiFly on an F.

And just to see how it would perform I flew the Cameras booster without the camera on an F.

I had plans to fly my Bomark on an H128 but the wind was just too strong for my liking. I dont think I will ever fly that model.

Mail to Robert DeHate