Long fun day.

We drove otu to FAR last night. We arrived on site about midnight, and the great glowing ball fusing hydrogen (aka sun) rose promptly at 5:39.

I made three atttempts to capture a rocket launch from my autopilot euquiped helicopter. Its currently setup so I put it into position by RC then hit the freeze mode and it stays there in that exact position and orientation until I unfreeze it. So I can take shelter while the rocket launches toward the helicopter. The first attempt we were too far away and the goproHD just caught the rocket launch leaving the frame. The 2nd and 3rd attempts were with my workhorse HPR rocket and I was less concerned about playing chicken with someone else's rocket.

I have video from both the air and ground for all three shots. My video editing setup is currently not installed on my current computer so I can't edit the video.
So I uploaded the helicopter view from the 2nd attempt and the ground view from the third attempt unedited. These are the only ones that are short enough to be reasonable in size. The helicopter view interesting part starts at 2:36.

I would usually resolve this before posting, but I'm catching plane on Sunday and I just won't get to it.

After playing with the helicopter we ran the small printed peroxide/gar motor for the 3rd time. I have video of that, but its really boring, the rocket exhaust is completely clear, and you just get 3 minutes of hearing hissing noises. So I probably won't post that one. Other than leaking valve on the test stand the test was perfect. So I have finally killed my cat pack issues. This cat pack has run three times for at least 3 min each time, over a period of 3 months with no maintenance. This means I can static test a motor, and then put it in a flight vehicle with confidence it will work as desired.


The link for the ground based camera is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zOFmxN6Hb0

Video from Helicopter...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1PpBMtGrA

Slightly Edited video from the Helicopter with Slo-mo replays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cm_wrL54lM