New J Class Record Set

8/16/2012 Curt von Delius flying his state of the art JMAX has again set the new TRA certified single stage J class altitude record of 23,735’ AGL, eclipsing his previous record of 19,758’ by a full 20% or 3977’. The flight was made at AeroPac's Aeronaut launch on August 3rd in the Black Rock Desert, NV.

This is his third attempt with the new design powered by an Aerotech J510W. “It all came together for this flight, perfect surface and winds aloft and a very straight boost”. “It’s great to have finally broken 20,000 feet with a J Class rocket, heck, nearly 24,000 feet!” von Delius said. “Amazingly, the actual altitude flight data was within 14’ feet of the simulations.”

The J510W burns for 2.37 seconds accelerating the JMAX to Mach 2.7 or just over 2000 miles per hour and pulling a max 80 gees. One veteran spectator commented “That rocket was honking out of the pad.”

The JMAX design is the culmination of Curt’s experience flying high impulse J class rockets, utilizing CAD designed carbon fiber, quartz fiber and lightweight CNC aluminum structures.

Amateurs Reach 100,000 ft

9/16/2012The team of Ken Biba, Casey Barker, Erik Ebert, Becky Green, Jim Green, David Raimondi, Tom Rouse and Steve Wigfield made a successful attempt to claim the Carmack Prize for an amateur flight above 100K`. Their flight on Tuesday 9/11/2012 reached 104,659' AGL as verified by both the onboard Beeline GPS as well as APRS telemetry from the airframe that was streamed in real-time to the APRS database. The flight track for the sustainer is at KG6DLV-4 and the booster is KG6DLV-5 at aprs.net The airframe is a two-stage, minimum-diameter design. Construction is primarily of commercially-available fiberglass components with carbon-laminated fins.

Architecture: Two stage minimum diameter - 4" booster to 3" sustainer Motors: Commercial motors. An AeroTech N1000W in the booster staging to the new AeroTech M685W in the sustainer. 25 seconds total burn time. Total impulse: 21,650 N-sec Length: 126" Pad weight: 61 lbs Avionics: (Raven+RDAS, Beeline GPS (70cm APRS), GoPro2 + WiFi BacPac) replicated in booster and sustainer Payload: Smartphone+sensors with 2m APRS telemetry Launcher: 12' rail

They flew at Black Rock, NV, during the AeroPac ARLISS and XPRS events, on September 11, 2012. They achieved full recovery of the airframe within 6 hours - both booster and sustainer.

The video of the launch both from the ground camera of the launch as well as from the onboard booster and sustainer HD cameras can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MVmH0bkMqE

New Zealand Altitude Records

If you are attempting an altitude record, please fill in the ALTITUDE RECORD FORM and send it in to the address given on the form for official NZRA approval. Members should bear in mind that every item on the form must be strictly adhered to.

World Single Motor Altitude Records

Staged and Clustered Records

 New European Amateur Altitude Record

On 17 March 2009, 10:28 UTC, the student rocket Stratos was launched from the Swedish Esrange Space Center. The rocket, an amateur rocket developed by students from the Delft University of Technology in Holland, reached an altitude of 12551 m (= 41,167 ft). This is from now on considered as the new official record for European amateur rockets. The record was earlier held by the British amateur rocket society MARS, which launched a rocket to 10.7 km from Black Rock Desert in USA in 2000.

'Our rocket performed like a dream. Everything worked as planned, the two rocket stages ignited nominally and the impact was within the safety area', says Mark Uitendaal, the Stratos project leader writing his thesis on this project.

The two-staged Stratos has been developed by a team of students from the faculty of Electrical and Aerospace Engineering, all members of the studentassociation Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE). The purpose of the association is to involve students in the designing and launching of experimental rockets. Dutch Space, a space company located in Leiden, is the principle sponsor of project Stratos.

Website: http://www.projectstratos.nl/index.php

 

Please note that 'outer space' is said to begin at an altitude of 100 km and the world record for a group of amateur rocketeers is 116 km set on 17 May 2004.

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