Vidroc Jr. Flight #1


 

Vidroc Jr. 1.0 on launch pad, ready to go.


Flight Video

The Launch (ground tracking)

The flight @ Half Speed  (field separated / "expanded" video)

Special note: to play the AVI version you need the DivX codec for your media (video) player. 
Click here to download a version for your system


Simply said, it was a great launch with crappy results.  I've posted what little I could salvage from the flight data, but it's really weak. The ground tracking video was nice, so at least there's that to look at.  

First we had trouble seeing the LCD screen on the Video Walkman, next time I’ll bring a black-out hood for it.  As for the video signal from the camera, even with a fresh battery we weren’t getting that hot of an image.  I’m not sure what was going on there; by all accounts it should have been better than the results we got.  We were even using a UHF loop antenna to increase the reception range from the transmitter.  We adjusted the antenna and felt the signal was good enough for launch, but as you can see from the results, it didn't hold up at all.  (Maybe if the antenna was next to the launch pad it would have yielded a little better result.)

The launch was clean and stable, the staging worked perfectly and the C engines easily pushed the Vidroc Jr. to decent altitude.  Because this was such a small rocket, I was a little concerned that the Mylar parachute would be too small for the weight, but it was more than adequate.

Epilog: In the end, because of the weight of the Pantraco PTV16 system, the lack of color and audio, and the stability of the video reception, it’s very likely I won’t use it again for Vidroc Jr..  I plan to do some test using helium balloons (as they discuss in their ad) to see if I can troubleshoot the problems we had, but it’s very likely the next Vidroc Jr. will be built on the X-10 camera.

 


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