(Digital Movie Creator)
First Flight Footage
Brief technical description
The Vidroc Eye uses a new gadget from Intel Play called the Digital
Movie Creator.
It amounts to a small digital video camera that can capture 1 minute of
reasonable quality video and audio at 15 frames per second.
For $99.00 it's a viable alternative to using a live downlink video system. I'll try to expand on this section at a later date; for now, if you have questions, feel free to email or the Vidroc mail list group.
12.15.01 Flight report
Like the first Vidroc flown almost a year
ago this flight was a mixture of success and less desirable results.
The day was clear and sunny and the launch spectacular -- straight up with only a mild spin.
I had set the camera/nose cone up with its own parachute and harness and flew it with a G33-4, electing to go with the short delay because I didn't want to risk having the ejection of the recovery system occur during descent.
The 4 second delay proved to be way too short and the nose cone blew while the rocket was still in ascent.
The second parachute for the booster was below the chute for the nose cone, so when the ejection charge blew, the force of air pushing on the opened booster trapped it in the body of the Clayola and it never deployed.
Subsequently, the booster came in ballistic and buried itself in the soft grass (still wet from recent rains).
The ground was so soft, in fact, that minimal damage occurred and the booster will fly again (and once extracted from the rocket, I even replaced the divot).
Though the camera only records at 15 frames per second, the footage is quite nice.
The audio on the other hand was exceptional in that if you listen closely you can hear the LCO say, "Coming in hot," followed by the impact of the booster into the soft grass. Then the LCO says, "Core sample!"
So, ironically, like the first Vidroc flight last
year, the test was a success but the rocket ended up buried in the ground.
The Intel camera system proved itself to be yet another alternative for
recording video from the vantage point of the rocket.
More to come.
