Version 2 of the rocket had a Piezo, that we left out, but we’re adding it back in for 2 reasons:

1)To make noise to help find the rocket if it lands in tall crops.

2)just as importantly, to give sound notifications of the boot progress of the flight computer. Since we gave ourselves the ability to power up externally, to check if we held the magnet in the right spot we had to go back and forth between the rocket and the ground station. A “BEEP” on power up will save those extra steps😀

One of our learnings from our recent launch of Ponzu, is that it is time to design a more ‘all-in-one’ ground station. Right now we’re using one box that has a SBC in it with the radios, running the node red server, then a separate modem/router, a laptop for viewing that data, a speaker for the voice announcements, several batteries for different things, and the launch control box (ie the big red button). A big chunk of our setup time, which could be eliminated, is getting all that ready.

One of the bits of data were still scratching our heads over, from our recent launch, is the altitude and ejection delay. Pretty much all the fight data was dang close to what our model predicted, but our altitude was only half what we expected, and the time from launch to ejection was 2 seconds shorter than what it should have been - implying the manufacturer’s delay was shorter than it was supposed to be, but I’m not sure if that’s likely or not.

We ended up doing a somewhat last minute launch this afternoon😀. We had some battery troubles, so we turned off our tooter before the actual launch, but we’ll write up a summary soon!

#Automated Flight Status:
T minus 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Connecting igntor leads to launch controller.

#Automated Flight Status:
T minus 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Powering up avionics, installing motor and ignitor.

#Automated Flight Status:
countdown paused at loading rocket, motor, and ignitor.

#Automated Flight Status:
T minus 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Powering up avionics, installing motor and ignitor.

#Automated Flight Status:
T minus 12 minutes and 0 seconds. Loading Rocket onto Launch Rail

#Automated Flight Status:
T minus 15 minutes and 0 seconds. Preparing Avionics.

Hey all! My interview on @therocketryshow posted!

https://podcast.therocketryshow.com/

If you don’t follow it already, I also have an account here for the rocket projects and live launch updates - @RadioRocket.

We’ve had to scrub a couple launches for weather and illness, but we’re planning on our next launch over the Christmas break. Info on that is at https://n3vem.com/blog/radiorocket/