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Lift off 3 x 2
litre
These are
photographs taken of the first launches of the 3 x 2
litre rocket which flew and flew. I don't know how long
it was up for but it was a hell of a long time. Although
the nose cone and the rocket body were separate, they
drifted 270 feet down-range.
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This is this little monster on
the launcher. As you can see from the position of
the horizon, it stands over six feet tall on the
launcher. Bubbles are visible in the bottom
section (of the three pressurised sections)
as it is being pressurised by one of the ground
crew.
 Listen to it during
launch during thrust phase (listen
out for the two whistles as the upper sections
depressurise once the water in the bottom section
is used up. This is caused by the air rushing
through the brass connectors which will only
whistle when the air is going between two speeds
- as the middle bottle has to start to
depressurise into the bottom bottle before the
top bottle starts to depressurise into the middle
, the two connectors reach these flowrates at
different times, hence two whistles) - see
the bottom of this page.
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Just after separation with the
main chute opening somewhere between 150 and 250
feet up |
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Getting a long way down-range by
now. |
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Touchdown for the rocket as the
ground crew start off on their retrieval
operation. At this point the drogue and the
rocket are at about the same range.
The drogue with the nosecone carried on and
ended up approximately 270 feet down-range.
I don't know how long they were up in the air
for - I didn't time it - but it seemed like
forever once the parachutes had opened.
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 This is the result of
the spectrum analysis (Fourier analysis) of the sound file [.wav
or Real
Media].It is a plot of amplitude (colour)
against frequency (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis).
The first whistle is
at 1 on the diagram with
the second at 2. The
lines descending as they go to the right
show the falling pitch with the second
one being of a lower pitch than the
first. The spectrum analysis was
performed using Wave Tracer Version 3.2
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