altimeter

[Rob Allen]

Was thinking once I've sorted my BP rockets out so they don't cato and fire up consistently, I was thinking of chucking an altimeter on to see just how far it's going. Has anyone ever done this? I don't mean with model rockets either, I mean the home made variety.

 

http://www.apogeerockets.com/Altimeter.asp

[mike_au]

At $90 I would be hesitant to strap it to a home made rocket. Maybe if you were getting into the really fancy rockets it might be worth it, but for a little BP core burner I don't see the point. One CATO and you're out of pocket almost $100.

 

Personally I would go with something like this: http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/est/est302232.htm

[Swede]

Mike nailed it. The simple altitude trigonometry device is cheap and really does work well. The only problem, to be really accurate, the person using the device needs to be pretty far away from the launch site, and the distance has to be known. Other than that, cheap and effective.

[psyco_1322]

Well you can get a pretty good idea of how far the rocket traveled by adding a nice boom to the top of it. Just take the video into windows movie maker and figure the time from the flash to the boom. Its really easy if you drag out the video so you can get down to fractions of seconds and pop up the audio bar and you can see when the boom reaches you. Just do some simple math given that sound travels roughly 1100 feet a second, if it takes .5 sec for the boom to get to you then thats about 550ft.

[TheSidewinder]

Well.... that's assuming the rocket goes straight up.

 

The sound-delay timing method tells you how far AWAY it is from you, and not necessarily how HIGH it goes.

 

If it deviates 30 degrees from vertical while going up, you have a fair bit more math to do, to get an accurate altitude.

[Pretty green flame]

But you do get a rough estimate. Pyro is not an exact science.

If you ask me, the most imporant thing in a rocket is that it can lift a header to a safe height, be it 30meters or 300meters, if you don't get hit by a titanium salute, comet, crossette, any type of star, the rocket is a success.

[mrmonteith]

Actually you can go with one of the PicoAlt altimeters which the cheapest is like $40 and very small. Enough probably that you encase it somehow to give it a little protection anyway. It would also work in model or HPR rockets.

 

Michael

[tentacles]

PGF: Don't forget, not getting hit by the tube+stick combo, that's why you put that titanium stick detacher on top, after all. ;P