February Meeting Presentation...

Rocket Altimetry

by Mark Jeghers, LUNAR #129

At the February meeting I will present the current state of the art of altimetry in our hobby. I will first present a brief overview of the typical hardware (in my case, an Adept recording altimeter) and the rockets it has flown in. I will then discuss my altitude recording efforts over the last 18 months, including mishaps and hard-learned lessons. I'll present the altitude data in graphical form, and talk about what I have learned about manipulating the data (deriving velocity and acceleration, cleaning up dirty data, etc.). Finally, I'll make brief mention of new hardware developments and my own future goals.

This whole topic is a great way to point out to kids that math is a power tool for them if they learn to use it. Parents should take note!


Copyright © 1996 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

Information date: Feb. 7, 1996 lk