How to make your Water Rocket fly higher

We have added a new section to our website that contains the first in a series of articles which share many of the tips and tricks we have learned over the years that can help you make your water rockets go higher and/or make your water rocket go farther.

The first article in the series explains many of the weight reduction techniques which we have employed in the fabrication of the MSP430 based electronics payload and parachute deploy module of our X-12 advanced ultra high pressure water rocket. These weight reducing methods can be applied to any water rocket design to improve the performance by shedding unnecessary mass, which will cut down on the amount of wasted energy.

Accompanying the new performance tips article is a new water rocket video which shows how the new payload module is set up. The video also includes a step-by-step explanation of our water rocket arming and launch procedures, from rocket preparation through launch and landing.

Many people have been curious about what it takes to launch one of our advanced rockets, and we thought it would be a great place to show the process, because it ties in very tightly with the new reduced mass payload module. The video illustrates the very same launch procedures which were used to set most of our Water Rocket world altitude records.

Our performance tips section will be expanded over the coming weeks with additional articles and videos showing specific construction tips and launcher designs which you can use to your advantage in your own rockets.

The first article in this series is available now and can be found at the following link: http://www.uswaterrockets.com/tips/weight_saving/tip.htm