Makers Corner

Thank you again for your advice. I settled on the Eggtimer Mini an Astrocam and building an Electronics Bay into the nosecone.

I have sanded the fins without a cant and a postal scale is to arrive today to check the max thrust/weight ratio. 

Rocksim sets the CP as114cm“ from the nose yielding a 2.1 stability, but Open Rocket (reading the same file as Rocksim) puts the CP at 108cm, yielding 0 stability! Your thoughts please.

I’ve modeled an added an Electronics Bay and Drogue Chute (both models say the main chute opening speed is too high), but the Drogue Chute has no effect (does not slow the descent) in the models. I see no event in the simulations at either the apogee (set) or motor ejection delay time? Someone said drogue chutes just don't work? What's up?

I agree with what Frank said. You don't need to invest in a bunch of electronics immediately. Get some experience, fly some rockets. If you are concerned about losing them, keep the altitude below 1000 feet and you can track them with your eyes. I can give you a lot of advice on trackers, but in the end I have still lost rockets with trackers (and it just makes the loss more expensive),. Have fun, and don't expect to have everything at once.

Hi Kevin,

I wish I knew the answers to your questions. I can tell you that you should keep your L1 certification flight simple. A flight of no more than 1000' in Amesbury should be your target. You may or may not need the JLCR. You don't need to use black powder duel deploy. Build the Zephyr stock, except of course for positive engine retention.

Come to a launch in Acton and Amesbury so you can see what other people fly and ask questions. I would recommend that you attend the twice a month Zoom meetings. You can get immediate answers to your questions. The Rocketry Forum is a good source of information. This is a video I often watch when building a mid or high power rocket. The only thing I do difference is glue in the CRs and fins and not just rely on fillets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtr3758PvzA&t=11s

A great source of information is Apogee Components. They have a bunch of videos.

I want to get a GPS Tracker to protect my investments in a JLCR & camera. It appears most GPS Trackers have the functionality of altimeters build in. So I guess I just need the GPS Tracker? There are many. The Apogee Simple GPS Tracker is the best deal. 

Does it work?

The Eggfinder kits seem are a decent price because assembly is required and I assume they work well because they are so popular. The Featherweight kits are very expensive.

For a camera, I saw the Mobius Mini, Runcam, and Foxeer all cost a bit more that the Estes Astrocam. Are any of them worth the extra cost? or

Is the Astrocam good enough?

Any camera recommendations? I've put a Universal Astrocam in my shopping cart for now.

Any camera recommendations?

Your post caused me to look at all the recommendations and I've settled on the Jolly Logic Two altimeter (Three's are out of stock everywhere I looked).

Perfect Flight altimeters are great for starting out. They are fairly easy to use and work quite well. I use a Stratologger CF on most of my DD rockets.

The Perfect flight Firefly is a good. tiny, basic altimeter. We used them at NARAM 62 tot record the flights of the D SuperRoc competition.

Jolly logic products are top notch as well. I have an JL Altimeter1 that I purchased to replace the fairly useless Estes altimeter. The JLCR is another great way to bring your rocket down safely. I have never had mine malfunction, except the one time I forgot to rearm it after a test release.

I haven't built any EggTimer kits yet and with my arthritic hands and failing eyesight, I'm not sure I will. I will report that I have heard only positive things about them.

All great suggests.

Eggtimer has a kit they call the Duel Deploy. It is basically the Balsa Machining School Rocket 29mm with an ebay and everything you need to build a duel deploy rocket. Black poweder, ematches and batteries not included. The price is only $100. Guy and I have one but have yet to build it. They have detailed instructions that you can download.

I think you'll find all of those recommendations work well.

I like the Jolly Logic altimeters for their simplicity. Egg Timer is fun for building.

For dual deploy, the Jolly Logic Chute release is a great, easy-to-use and reasonably priced altimeter.

If you want a more traditional dual-deploy altimeter that fires ejection charges, it's hard to beat the price of the reliable PerfectFlite Stratologger.

My overall favorite these days is the Blue Raven for a full-featured dual deploy altimeter. The phone app which connects via BlueTooth is particularly good.

@Alberton, yeah, a lot of the solutions are geared toward high power rockets which we haven't gotten into yet (but will).

The build we just did is an Estes So Long. It has a payload section and takes one or two E/F engines. So, it will be fine for a Jolly Roger AltimeterTwo type device but not for any kits with Arduinos and things like that.

I may go with an AltimeterTwo to get started collecting data quickly and easily and then start researching beacons and high power kits. The Eggtimer Rocketry kits are really appealing and it would be really fun to do GPS tracking.

Thank you for your insights.

Those Eggtimer kits would need more lifting power, than say that Altimeter Two. What sort of rocket motors are you looking at using? A G impulse class motor can do a lot, and you wouldn't even need an L1 or L2....

I mentored the Londonderry HS for this years ARC, and we (okay, they) used the Jolly Logic Altimeter Two. Seems to work well. It's very lightweight and will fit nicely in your Estes rockets. The tiny LCD screen doesn't like cold weather though, and the display seemed to be slow or lag behind as it cycled through it's various readings. Other than that, it worked well. I'm actually thinking of including it (yep, I bought one for myself) in my AGM58 (L2 attempt build) as an additional altimeter (flight data only).

I have one of the Eggtimer kits (Proton) I'm thinking of using for the dual deployment in my L2 build as the backup. It is still in kit form so I still need to solder it up...

@Alberton, I can do electronics repairs and solder things and could put together a kit of parts with a board. I guess to get started I'd love to see what's available off the shelf but I'd really love to hear from someone who actually owns and uses or has built one of these kits.

Some of the options I found:

Estes model 2246 Rocket Altimeter ($40) which could be a good first step.

The Jollylogic AltimeterOne ($60) and AltimeterTwo ($80) products look promising for off-the-shelf since they seem to do a lot more than the estes product.

An Arduino DIY project could be cool but I'd love to hear from someone in the club that's been down this path.

https://www.instructables.com/Arduino-Rocket-Data-Logger/

This RRC3 looks cool but it's sold out

https://www.sierrafoxhobbies.com/en/electronic-devices-for-rocketry/1486-altimeter-rrc3-missile-works.html

Eggtimer Rockety kits look cool for DIY options

https://eggtimerrocketry.com/home/altimeters-av-bay/

Here's one from Perfectflite that's recommended by the folks from the American Rocket Challenge..

http://www.perfectflite.com/pnut.html

If you don't mind some soldering, you can try a product from Eggtimer Rocketry..

https://eggtimerrocketry.com/home/altimeters-av-bay/

This is a question that can be a lot more complicated than you might think. Chris, are you looking to create your own electronics, or use something that's "off the shelf" ?

I would find this topic very interesting. I am looking forward to people's responses.

I've poked around the forum a bit and haven't found anything on this topic. I've built many rockets but I've never included any electronics into my builds. I'd like to integrate at least an altimeter into the payload section of a recent build.

If anyone has advice or warnings regarding kits, products, links etc. please share them. I'm also interested in other functionality like a tracking beacon or trajectory flight recorder function etc. Lots of possibilities that I know others have experience with.

Thanks in advance.