Axion G2 and Polaron G2 Flights

This week we met up with a fellow water rocketeer Paul Wright from Victoria who came up to film some water rockets for his school project. It was a fun weekend and we got to launch a couple of our bigger rockets. The launch conditions were absolutely ideal with blue skies and no wind. Paul got really lucky because we had an almost solid week of rain the previous week.

The night before launch we met up with Paul and his family and went to the local park to film some static night shots of the rockets that would be flown the next day. He had a dolly set up as well as a crane to get some nice shots.

The next day we met up again at Whalan Reserve for the actual launches.

First up was our Axion G2 with the G1 boosters. We assembled it as normal on the pad and then started to pour the water into the boosters. We thought it was a little odd that it didn't look like there was a lot of water in the first booster, only to notice that water started draining into the other boosters. Huh? we hadn't seen that before! I blew into the top of one of the boosters to force the water back, but soon as I stopped blowing the water came back. Well it didn't take long to realize that we forgot to screw on the fill tubes that prevent this very thing. Doh! so we had to pull the whole rocket off the pad, attach the fill tubes and refill with water. The rest of the assembly went fine, although it did highlight the fact that we really need the checklist for launching these rockets. We didn't bring the checklist with us this time.

Paul wanted to film the rocket with boosters falling away so we only pressurised it to 140psi in order to keep it within the park. We didn't have an altimeter on it but we expected around 500-550 feet. The rocket came up to pressure and Paul (my son) pressed the launch button. The rocket twitched but didn't release. Luckily we have the pressure release valve on the scuba tank and so we depressurised the rocket. The main stage secondary lever just failed to pull back far enough to release the rocket. The primary release lever was a little tight when we put the main stage on the launcher and so it added a little more resistance. I jiggled the rocket a little to seat it properly until the main lever gripped the nozzle without any force, then reset all the booster levers and we pressurised it again.

This time the rocket left the launch pad as normal and released all boosters on cue. It nicely powered up to apogee recovering safely not far from the pad.

The second rocket was our Polaron G2b with a 15mm nozzle and launch tube. We again pressurised it only to 140 psi and the expected altitude was again around 500 feet. The rocket flew beautifully and arced over at apogee deploying both the primary as well as the backup parachutes and drifted down for a gentle landing.

Next up Paul W. launched his great looking "Apaulo" rocket with a 9mm nozzle and foam. The rocket was launched at 110psi and left a nice arcing foam trail in the sky. When the parachute deployed the rocket was flying almost horizontally and so had a bit of velocity. Half the shroud lines were ripped out of the plastic parachute. The parachute now mostly emulated a streamer and the rocket came down horizontally at a higher speed. The lower bottle was a little buckled but everything else survived well. The bottom bottle just needs a little air to pop it back out.

We then filmed some additional scenes of smaller rockets and we intentionally over-pressurised one to show what can happen. We had it full of water to try to reduce the amount of noise in the park, though there was no one else around at that stage.

The following day we went back to our place to film some additional footage in the workshop and also do a short interview. So a good fun 3 days of rocket activity.

Flight Details