Night Ranger

[Brain]

Since being back in rocketry this last month or so I've been mulling the idea of night rocketry. I found a little bit online about the subject, and there is even a company that sells rockets outfitted with LEDs and such to launch at night. Being an amateur astronomer helps me to think nocturnally... :cool:

Other methods for night recovery stategies may be glow sticks, Lightsheet (illuminating sheets that you can cut to shape- in several colors - just add power), maybe even a (watertight) payload bay full of glow-in-the-dark liquid... not to mention simple glow-in-the-dark paint.

This design was conceived to capitalize mentally on the night launch idea, but it makes a nice design for any application.

-Brain
Aim for the sucker holes.

[luke strawwalker]

Since being back in rocketry this last month or so I've been mulling the idea of night rocketry. I found a little bit online about the subject, and there is even a company that sells rockets outfitted with LEDs and such to launch at night. Being an amateur astronomer helps me to think nocturnally... :cool:

Other methods for night recovery stategies may be glow sticks, Lightsheet (illuminating sheets that you can cut to shape- in several colors - just add power), maybe even a (watertight) payload bay full of glow-in-the-dark liquid... not to mention simple glow-in-the-dark paint.

This design was conceived to capitalize mentally on the night launch idea, but it makes a nice design for any application.

-Brain
Aim for the sucker holes.

Yes... we've discussed this a few times in some pretty informative threads both here and on TRF (the rocketry forum) and RP (rocketry planet). Use the search button above and I'm sure you'll come up with some useful info...

The club (Challenger 498) has had night launches out here the past couple years, with pretty good success. Night flying is fun, because you can really let your imagination go. I've flown one of those kid's "whirlygig" spinning LED toys (in the clear plastic globe) on top of a Big Bertha 'clone' powered by a single 24 mm D12 or E9 with good success, and it looks TERRIFIC in the air! Even just an LED "finger light" taped to the bottom of a regular "Baby Bertha" nosecone, shining up into the translucent nosecone, after the nosecone has been painted dayglo pink looks really good... VERY visible! Just make sure that whatever you use, that the batteries are shimmed up (if they're spring loaded) or oriented so that they don't lose contact under the heavy gee loads of liftoff and acceleration under thrust! Lots of "flashing LED toys" and stuff like that has a button that, when pressed once, turns them on, and pressed again, turns them off, and if the battery loses contact under acceleration, they turn off and stay off til the button is pressed again!

Of course building your own LED setup, using light strips, etc is really the ultimate... just remember the battery connection issue when designing your power setup...

As far as light sources go, forget about glow-in-the-dark... we've had rockets COMPLETELY PAINTED in glow in the dark paint, and while they look good up close, even on the pad 30 feet away, when they liftoff, forget it... you'll never see them in the air... too fast, and the bright engine exhaust totally washes the light out from the much dimmer glow in the dark, so you lose track of it. Usually even stars and incidental light (light pollution) is enough to mess with your eyes so that you can't see the dim glow-in-the dark, especially at a distance. The guy that launched the glow-in-the-dark painted rocket also had a small LED watch battery powered "lighsaber" looking lit up clear plastic rod thing on top of his rocket, which wiggled and lost contact and went out in flight/recovery and I nearly ran the rocket over with the golf cart, looking for it in freshly cut grass about an hour after the launch wrapped up... I came within a foot of it and could STILL barely see it laying on top of the grass, on a moonless night with the golf cart lights OFF, driving around slowly with my daughter looking for missing rockets by their flashing LED's...

Glow sticks, by themselves, are not usually enough light either... they may look good, but when you press the launch button, they disappear... the movement of flight/recovery, with such a dim light source, simply makes them virtually impossible to see in the air... You can see them good on the ground, because you look straight at them at close range, without movement, and the light source "loads up" your retinas enough to see them... but in the air, flying/swinging under a chute, they are EXTREMELY hard to see, if not impossible, due to the movement and distance simply not allowing your eyes to gather enough light in one spot on the retina to see it. Even on the ground, they are VERY hard to see! We had a guy lose his rocket at the night launch a couple years ago-- it had six LONG lightsticks taped to the tube, looked good, but was impossible to see on the ground, til I found it three months later in winter feeding cows one morning...

Active (powered) light sources are MUCH MUCH better, especially if they are powerful, and NON-DIRECTIONAL.... LED's can be QUITE directional and hard to see, if they're pointed the wrong way (like DOWN in the grass after landing!) and if there aren't several of them pointing in several different directions so that they 'spread the light around'. Flashing is helpful too! A single LED can be easily diffused into multiple directions by shining it up into a nosecone-- most plastic nosecones are translucent and will light up quite nicely and quite visibly! We even had one fellow launch an small Estes Ajax (like an X-ray) with a small flashing LED "beer pin" (lapel pin shaped like a beer bottle) packed in the clear cargo tube, and it was readily visible in flight, and under chute. He lost it on the descent, but I found it flashing away, lighting up the grass in a 10-foot circle out the pasture right after the launch ended. I saw it from about 15 feet away... it landed partially 'lights down' into the grass, at about the 4 o'clock position... So you might want to think about how visible things will be on the ground if it lands in a bad position...

Anyway, here's a few pics... hope this helps! OL JR :)

[luke strawwalker]

Here's a few more pics so you see what I mean... the long black rocket is painted with glow-in-the-dark...

The Baby Bertha has a single "finger light" taped into the hole in the bottom of the nosecone, and the nosecone shot with a coat of dayglo-pink paint...

Later! OL JR :)

[soopirV]

I too have recently been intrigued with the idea of night-launches. Today, my wife unwittingly gave me the perfect solution- she "stole" the last coated sunflower seeds from my oldest son's Easter Basket, and was on her way to toss out the container. I snatched it from her hand with glee and ran to the garage. She thought I'd lost my mind. Turns out the container fits in a TC-50 perfectly, and will form a completely transparent egg-shaped nose on a future build. I have a ton of LEDs from a previous life, so I plan on lighting this thing up like the Empire State building. Of course now the tricky bits have to happen- figuring out the CG/CP locations, etc. I'm thinking long leads from battery, to keep the higher mass of the battery back further (fully restrained, of course), and mid-body or rear ejection...other thoughts?

[Brain]

Besides being an amateur astronomer for the last 25 years, I've been a disc golfer for seven years or so, and that sport has a nighttime component as well. They tape glowsticks to the discs and they are fairly easy to see off in the distance. Very cool, actually. And there is a company that sells lighted discs!

I'm a newbie where it comes to the strategic possibilities of model rocket construction. The last time I dabbled in rocketry was when the boys were little and we bought a launch set and a couple of rockets. I only remember one launch episode, where we promptly lost one of them on a roof we couldn't access. And back in the 70's my Dad and brother got into it for a little while (the days of the Big Bertha...).

But I've kept a rocketry bookmark folder in my browser for a long time. What prompted this round of interest was one of my sons heading off to L.A. to start his life as a 3D animator comes out from cleaning his room with a mess of rocket kits he won years ago. They became mine... I discovered my cousin used to be rabid about rocketry years ago and he was in for buying a launch set and gettin' after it.

The first attempt to launch was this genius idea I had to cover the Estes Sizzler with gold glitter and launch it Thursday night/Friday morning August 12th to commemorate the Perseid meteor shower. We had contact info on the parachute because we fully expected to lose the rocket in the dark off into the neighborhood - which is ultimately what we wanted to have happen!

But that didn't happen. We were unfamiliar with the Quest motors I bought (a dollar cheaper) and didn't get the igniter up in the motor right. Disappointing... but then the idea of night rocketry really came to me and yeah... I'd like to try some of it. I might lack some technical skills, but I try to make up for it with enthusiasm.

Appreciate the conversation!

-Brain
Aim for the sucker holes.

[Slickwilly]

Great design BRAIN!! I couldn't resist designing a "C" engine design.

Enjoy!!

[luke strawwalker]

I too have recently been intrigued with the idea of night-launches. Today, my wife unwittingly gave me the perfect solution- she "stole" the last coated sunflower seeds from my oldest son's Easter Basket, and was on her way to toss out the container. I snatched it from her hand with glee and ran to the garage. She thought I'd lost my mind. Turns out the container fits in a TC-50 perfectly, and will form a completely transparent egg-shaped nose on a future build. I have a ton of LEDs from a previous life, so I plan on lighting this thing up like the Empire State building. Of course now the tricky bits have to happen- figuring out the CG/CP locations, etc. I'm thinking long leads from battery, to keep the higher mass of the battery back further (fully restrained, of course), and mid-body or rear ejection...other thoughts?

That should make a sweet looking setup...

Actually, you want the weight FORWARD to move the CG forward for greater stability. If it gets TOO heavy (making it overstable and thus highly prone to weathercocking), you might think about a bigger motor for more performance and/or switching to rear ejection or something like that to help move the CG back some...

I think with the number of LED's and the power source you'll probably end up putting in a cone that size, it should work quite well with a D12 or E9 motor...
Those motors put on a good show at night!

Later and be sure ya post a build thread! OL JR :)

PS... I've got a similar project in the works, with a different source material for the nosecone, but if I showed ya I'd have to kill ya... LOL:)

[JRThro]

Great design BRAIN!! I couldn't resist designing a "C" engine design.

Enjoy!!
How stable is the design with the motor installed? That's more important than the stability without a motor.

[Brain]

Great design BRAIN!! I couldn't resist designing a "C" engine design.

Enjoy!!

For some reason the first time I read your post I didn't see the .rkt file attachment.
Very nice job yourself!
I'd love to know how you produced some of the components in RockSim (like the ball in the center, and the fin spikes). Trying to get a leg-up on that prog.

-Brain
Aim for the sucker holes.

[JRThro]

I'd love to know how you produced some of the components in RockSim (like the ball in the center, and the fin spikes
If what I see in OpenRocket is any indication, he used 2 transitions back to back for the ball in the center, and he used free-form fins to draw the fins with the spikes.

[Brain]

I have also been playing with OpenRocket, and I can find how to re-design the fins there, but I have yet to locate that functionality in my copy of RockSim. I hope someone will give me some tutoring.

-Brain
Aim for the sucker holes.