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Highlights of recent developments on the MiniSShot Project
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- An important Skype teleconference was held this past Saturday
afternoon to discuss details of the work needed to prepare for the
MiniSShot flight, and to select a launch date. The 34 Work Packages were
all reviewed and task owners assigned for most. Due dates for tasks were
agreed upon. A launch date of February 7th, 2010 was chosen, with backup
date the following weekend.
Participants in the telecon were:
Andre Alexandre
Matt Campbell
Sam Grado
Peter Kocalka
Rick Maschek
Richard Nakka
Hans Olaf Toft
The two hour telecon proved to be highly productive. A follow-up telecon
will be held this Wednesday (Oct.28th) for those Team Members who were
unable to participate. Special thanks for Peter and Hans who stayed up
late at night to be part of this conference.
- The MiniSShot motor casings, refurbished following the July 25th
static test firing, were hydrostatic pressure tested by Richard this
past weekend. The forward casing was done first, and successfully passed
the 1200 psig (82 atmospheres) pressure test.
Hydraulic pump setup:
http://www.sugarshot.org/downloads/hydrotest001a.jpg
The aft casing was then tested. At a pressure of just over 800 psig (55
atmospheres), a sudden drop in pressure was noted and simultaneously a
spray of water was seen emanating from the side of the casing. A
pin-hole leak was observed, approximately 6" (15 cm) aft of the
Mid-bulkhead end of the casing, where the reinforcing plies terminate.
http://www.sugarshot.org/downloads/hydrotest005a.jpg
http://www.sugarshot.org/downloads/hydrotest006a.jpg
As a precaution, both motor casings will be discarded and replaced with
new ones for the upcoming MiniSShot flight.
- The final version of the report "Ameron Fiberglass/epoxy Pipe –
Experimental Measurement of Glass Transition Temperature" has been
posted on our website documentation page.
http://www.sugarshot.org/documentation_old.html
- Andre Alexandre successfully flew his own rocket with the Vibration
Sensor and Logger this past weekend. The flight was a success, with the
rocket reaching an apogee of approximately 600 feet (180 m.), followed
by a soft landing.
Andre proudly posing with his rocket at the touchdown site:
http://www.sugarshot.org/downloads/land.jpg
Unfortunately, the touchdown was nevertheless hard enough to momentarily
dislodge the Vibration Logger battery which resulted in the data being
lost. Andre plans to do a repeat flight in the near future, with a
better secured battery.
- Andre Alexandre also reports that he successfully got the DTMF module
working when interfaced to the FRS radios. The test set was Andre's
laptop generating the tones via MatLAB, and feeding one radio with the
audio, and on the other end, approximately 10 metres away, the DTMF
board and the other radio. Andre plans to port the MatLAB tone
generation algorithm to a microcontroller in order to have a portable
tone generator.
- The Team Members page has been updated with Rick Maschek's biography.
http://www.sugarshot.org/project_teams.html
- Alberto Gassol has revised the News page with the addition of all the
2009 Weekly Activity Reports. As well, a link to all the earlier 2008
Weekly Activity Reports has been added.
http://www.sugarshot.org/weekly_report.html
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Share in our dream. With your support, we'll transform our dream into
reality. Make a donation today.
http://www.sugarshot.org/sponsors.html#Donors
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