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Mounting
Doug Gardei had an innovative way of
mounting his PICO altimeter so he could move it from rocket to
rocket.
These pictures show it mounted in a
film canister.
Although you have to protect the
altimeter from ejection gasses he states that because it is
attached to the nosecone above the parachute that this is not
an issue.
He has had numerous successfull flights of this setup and
he might have some video of them at http://www.gardei.com/
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Fleet
This
is a picture of the fleet of rockets I have been using to test
the PICO alts
On the left is the mosquito, in the center
is the 18mm dia stretched sizzler, and or the right is the PICO test
vehicle. |
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Mosquito
These are some pictures of the PICO-AD1
mounted in a mosquito!
The battery is 4 hearing aid batteries stacked up. This gives 6V
to power the AD1.
CAUTION: Never solder wires to a battery, it may explode.
I attached the wires to the end batteries and wrapped electrical tape
around the whole stack.
This concerned me as the batteries need to be
squeezed together to make contact.
Well this turned out to be a
blessing in disguise.
It turned out that once inside the mosquito
it functioned as an ON/OFF switch. By simply pushing the NC all the
way on it would connect the batteries and turn on the altimeter. I
then just wrapped some tape around it to secure the NC.
As of
10/19/02 I have yet to fly it since the last launch was at a field
with tall
grass.
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Sizzler
This is one of
Estes new Sizzlers.
It is 18mm dia and I built an altimeter bay for it. I also did
not attach the bottom of the nosecone to give me extra room for
electronics.
The PICO-LO2 drops right into this bay and it works great.
Flights:
| # |
Motor |
Altimeter |
Altitude |
Note |
| 1 |
B4-4 |
PICO-LO1 |
392 |
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| 2 |
B4-4 |
PICO-LO1 |
378 |
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| 3 |
B4-4 |
PICO-LO1 |
445 |
Motor kicked out at ejection |
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PICO test
vehicle
This is a rocket I call the
PICO test vehicle.
I dont remember what Estes called it but it is about 1in
dia.
Flights
| # |
Motor |
Altimeter |
Altitude |
Note |
| 1 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
232 |
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| 2 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
none |
Got stuck on pad. Low altitude,
never armed. |
| 3 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
232 |
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| 4 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
246 |
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| 5 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
210 |
Angled , low arcing
flight. |
| 6 |
B6-4 |
PICO-AD1 |
232 |
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| 7 |
C6-5 |
PICO-AD1 |
425 |
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Hyfly III
Here are a couple shots of the electronics bay from my L3 rocket.
In the picture you can see two PICO altimeters I used for deployment.
One PICO-AD2 and one PICO-AD3.
I was glad to be
using small altimeters because they were mounted against the MMT and there was not much room.
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Comanche III
After pranging my Comanche when the upper stage did not light I decided to install timers for the stages and dual deployment in the sustainer.
This will also allow me to fly it really high on composit motors.
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