Woomera is located in the centre of South Australia, and was established in the early 1950's as a test site for rockets and bombs.  The primary role was to help Britain, the US, and Australia develop a long range nuclear warhead delivery system.

Our team of eight drove the 1,400km (870 miles) from Melbourne to Woomera in just over one day. The weather at Woomera was hot and windy.  We were expecting temperatures in the low 40's (110F) but fortunately it never made it above 35C.

This photo shows me standing on the launch pad where Australia's first satellite was launched in 1966. Wresat was launched on a surplus US Redstone rocket. The launch site has now been completely demolished, except for three camera blockhouses. You can see the railway tracks for the gantry. More than one dozen Redstone's were launched from this site.

The first hybrid flight was for a modified PML Aurora rocket flying a standard Hypertek 440CC tank and grain. Deployment was via a home grown microprocessor controlled timer payload system.

The Aurora is 100mm diameter and just over 2 meters tall.   This same rocket flew at Springfest '97 in Nevada a year earlier using composite motors.

This photo shows the Aurora on the pad during countdown.   The building at the right is a camera blockhouse. The reflective foil is thermal insulation for the Oxygen and Nitrous Oxide tanks to keep them cool

After one aborted countdown we finally hit the button. A flame appeared followed by an explosion. The rocket was launched off the pad for a short distance and at the same time the nose cone ejected, pulling out the parachute and bungee cord. And then the whole lot slammed back onto the launch apron in a very un-ceremonious way. A loud hiss of escaping Nitrous Oxide could be heard.

Everyone was tempted to rush the pad to see what had happened, but I reminded them that the pyros hadn't fired and I was convinced that the G switch would have triggered under the force.   Sure enough, about 10 seconds later the pyros fired.

I have some great video of this event.

Video footage showed that the motor had ignited, and started to build up to full thrust just prior to the explosion. It apppears the explosion happened at the point when the motor built to full thrust.

We wandered around the range and found this buried booster section of a sounding rocket less than one kilometer from the launch site.  This booster has probably been buried here for thirty years.  Bits of the fin section were found nearby.

Remind me to teach Scott how to focus a camera!

This time it was for a very modified PML Eclipse with my advanced payload section attached.

A larger Hybrid motor was to be flown with an 800cc tank.

This is a heavy rocket, and complicated to setup due to the electronics and camera payload..

The instrumentation package contains a microprocessor controlled system consisting of an accelerometer, pressure sensor for altitude, non-volatile memory, multiple pyro outputs, camera control outputs, and some other bits and pieces.

The flight data is recorded at 0.1 second intervals and can be graphed on a PC when recovered.

Here is a close up view of the payload.

The hatch below the mirror housing has been removed to gain access to the power and arming switches, serial data port and status monitoring bus.

Safety arming functions are critical, because there are four pyro charges inside. Two pyros control drogue parachute deployment, and two control main chute deployment.

The reason they are in pairs is to provide redundancy. One out of each pairis driven from an altimeter based ejection system, and the other is from a backup timer system based on a Black Sky Reasearch Timer 2.

Several hundred hours of work has gone into the design of the elctronics and software to make all of this work properly

The hybrid motor again exploded on the pad.  This time because of the weight of the payload it never had enough thrust to lift off the pad, it only rose about 60 cm and settled back down on the launch rod. I'm glad about this because of the potential damage that would have occurred to the payload if it had been dropped on to the cement launch apron in the same way as the previous rocket.

I was still expecting the recovery pyros to fire and launch my 200 hours worth of payload into the air a dump it on the pad (certain death for it), but thankfully there was not enough G's for it to arm.

The motor had exactly the same damage as the previous flight.  We were very disappointed.

When we returned to Melbourne I contacted Hypertek, and they acknowledged that there had been a faulty batch of fuel grains, and Korey Kline generously sent me a gift pack of goodies to provide some compensation. I am still a dedicated follower of the Hypertek system, and have had many successfull launches since.   See the note below for more information.

There were plenty of smaller rockets to fly, and most of the team had some fun launching a whole range of rockets.

There were extremely strong winds all day, and most rockets were blown for kilometers, which kept the recovery teams fit.  Only a couple of rockets were lost.

Here the team can be seen preparing for a flight.

A composite motor takes to the skies.

This structure is the main blast deflector and is about 6 stories tall. The metal launch towers are long gone.

Most of the facilities have been completely destroyed. It appears that it was used as an aerial bombing range target.

A travesty for such significant monument to our national history.

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