This week
SpaceX landed an rocket on a barge, and filmed it with a drone. The next day it occurred to me: my friend has a rocket, and I have a drone. If it's good enough for Elon Musk, it's good enough for me! Keen not to anger campus security any more than we had to (after recently crashing said drone onto the roof of the Zeeman building), Hersall Common was chosen as the launch site instead of one of the fields at the university.
The first obstacle encountered was the weather, with one launch aborted due to high winds and rain. The second came in the form of two important life lessons:
1) Super Glue does not fuck around
2) Do not volunteer to hold rocket parts while someone else Super Glues them
Luckily the abandoned launch gave me some time to reflect on poor life choices and a sudden lack of skin on my fingertips.
The next day brought fairer weather, so we headed back out to the common with our now fully assembled rocket. Cue us realising that we hadn't attached the nose cone and parachute to the body tube and another half hour of shenanigans with superglue. Finally, we could launch. I didn't realise until this point just how much having an electric ignition system adds to the whole experience. It really felt like we were playing with something dangerous.
There was quite a lot of wind on the common which meant we had to angle the guide rail at about 15° in order to have the rocket go something resembling upwards. It also meant that the drone was grounded. Craft #1 was small and light, weighing in at 42.5g with an A8-3 motor weighing 16.2g providing an average of 8 Newtons of thrust (9.7 peak). That's 0-60 mph in 0.2 seconds (not counting air resistance).
Rocket #2 was a bit heavier (62.4g), with the same motor. Evidence suggests that we need something bigger to get a decent launch from it. I think that's an excuse to go out and buy some more explosives.
And finally, here are the videos from the launches!
