Sunday, September 15, 2019

A Successful Keychain Cam Flight

A little over a week ago, on September 6th, I flew a Quest Big Rage with an 808 keychain video camera strapped to the payload section.  This marked the first time since 1981 that I flew a model rocket with any kind of a camera attached to it, that being an Estes Cineroc.

This flight went very well, but when I got the camera home, and the video transferred to the PC, I found that neither of the two installed media player software packages I had would work right.  One would stop video after five seconds, but continue with the audio. The other would play the video correctly, but when I wanted to pause and capture a single frame, the image would go black.

Yesterday, I found a good media player package download that claimed it would take care of any format...and it worked.

So, here are some still pics of the flight:

Shortly after liftoff. 

 Up until now, I have been taking photos of my model rockets.  This time, the rocket took a picture of me!

Several still frames of the flight.....



During the wild recovery under the parachute, the camera caught this single frame image of the booster section....


Now, I need to get to work on coming up with a stable parachute recovery system that will allow the camera to point groundward, and minimize payload spinning.

Future plans for camera projects include getting the keychain successfully adapted to boost glider flight.