Oracle Flights

I bought an Estes Oracle video rocket in late 2008, but didn't get around to flying it until Thanksgiving day, 2009, at my mother's house out in the hill country of central Texas. The day was perfect for flying: temperature in the mid 60s and little to no wind for the first two flights. I flew all three flights with a D12-5 motor. For the first flight, I kept the camera tethered to the booster during the recovery phase with the camera facing downward during the descent. For the second and third flights, I recovered the camera separately from the booster, rigging up a harness to allow the camera to pan the horizon. The second flight was really nice, but the third flight got buffeted by the wind that was picking up. The camera also got tangled up in the harness somewhat, causing it to jerk around a lot. But the videos are interesting and I've always liked flying cameras on rockets.

The resulting videos can be seen by clicking on the frame captures below. I've posted two versions of the third flight: one in 'real time,' and the other with the recovery portion of the video slowed down by a factor of eight to help make some sense of all the jerky video.

Flight 1	Flight 2
Flight 3	Flight 3 (slowed)

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