Lift off 3 x 2 litre

These are photographs taken of the first launches of the 3 x 2 litre rocket which flew and flew. I don't know how long it was up for but it was a hell of a long time. Although the nose cone and the rocket body were separate, they drifted 270 feet down-range.

This is this little monster on the launcher. As you can see from the position of the horizon, it stands over six feet tall on the launcher.

Bubbles are visible in the bottom section (of the three pressurised sections) as it is being pressurised by one of the ground crew.

Listen to it during launch during thrust phase (listen out for the two whistles as the upper sections depressurise once the water in the bottom section is used up. This is caused by the air rushing through the brass connectors which will only whistle when the air is going between two speeds - as the middle bottle has to start to depressurise into the bottom bottle before the top bottle starts to depressurise into the middle , the two connectors reach these flowrates at different times, hence two whistles) - see the bottom of this page.

Just after separation with the main chute opening somewhere between 150 and 250 feet up
Getting a long way down-range by now.
Touchdown for the rocket as the ground crew start off on their retrieval operation.

At this point the drogue and the rocket are at about the same range.

The drogue with the nosecone carried on and ended up approximately 270 feet down-range.

I don't know how long they were up in the air for - I didn't time it - but it seemed like forever once the parachutes had opened.

This is the result of the spectrum analysis (Fourier analysis) of the sound file [.wav or Real Media].

It is a plot of amplitude (colour) against frequency (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis). The first whistle is at 1 on the diagram with the second at 2. The lines descending as they go to the right show the falling pitch with the second one being of a lower pitch than the first.

The spectrum analysis was performed using Wave Tracer Version 3.2


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