La Courtine 2007

The Courtine camp is located in central France west of Clermont-Ferrand.

Guy-Iness

This year, the CLES-FACIL launched Iness and her "satellite" Guy. Iness is stabilized in rotation by tangential nozzles which ejects pressurized air. This air comes from a pressurized carbon tank from Paint Ball. The pressure there is 300 bars. At the oulet of the tank a regulator reduces this pressure to 6 bars. Solenoid valves coupled to the inertial unit direct the air jet into the correct nozzles to counteract any inclinations of rocket rotation. At the peak, Iness dropped her cansat "Guy".

A magnificent presentation of the project is available here (in French)

The CLES-FACIL team for this launch

Iness in preparation

Iness rotation control nozzles

les buses de controle de rotation d'Iness

Arrival of Iness in the launch area

Ignition

REVA

For my part, I launched REVA, a mini-rocket in the tradition of Mécanix launched at Sissonne in 2003. So always a recovery by aerodynamic shutter, but this time with a back-up system, in case the shutter does not open. not the door to culmination. In addition, on-board electronics measure the static and dynamic pressures, as well as the opening angle of the shutter, the state of the door (open or closed) and the state of the timer (expired or not). This makes it possible to check which of the flap or the timer has triggered the opening of the door. The pressure measurements make it possible to deduce the altitude and the speed.

Unfortunately, following a control error of the microcontroller in PDIP box instead of SOIC, we had to glue the box to the back of the card and solder small wires (blue in the photo) that we passed through holes to weld them on one side on the lugs in the air of the microcontroller and on the other on the welding areas provided for the SOIC box (CMS). During the flight, most of the welds failed and we had no significant action.

We didn't know who opened the door: the timer or the flap?

Elec Reva