UKRA Rocketry Record Criteria
For a record to be valid, the following flight criteria must be adhered to:
NOTE 1: Flying only a payload on a rocket which has not been built by the record applicant or group, or on a pre-built third party rocket, is unacceptable.
NOTE 2: Commercially available rocket motors or amateur rocket motors may be used for propulsion, as long as the propulsion system meets the legal and health and safety requirements of the point/location of manufacture and point/location of launch. UKRA will not verify any flight in which an amateur motor is used which contravenes the 1875 Explosives Act.
NOTE 3: Altitude logging may be by means of optical tracking and trigonometry where appropriate (and where full details of the altitude determination are included with the record claim), and, or, by commercial altimeter/accelerometers, photogrammetry, GPS, radar track or other acceptable system for high altitude flights.
NOTE 4: Dead reckoning of altitudes, or simply watching the rocket flight, are understandably, unacceptable methods of altitude logging for altitude claims.
NOTE 5: Commercial altimeter/accelerometers used by UK rocketeers for altitude logging include the AED R-DAS, Perfectflite MiniAlt W/D and Alt 15K, PicoAlt, Black Sky Research ALTACC, Cambridge Instruments IAX-96,G-Wiz LC,LC Deluxe and MC and Transolve P2. These have been shown over hundreds of flights to be sufficiently accurate to be acceptable devices for altitude determination.
NOTE 5 UPDATE (2018): The following commercial altimeters have added to the above list and have demonstrated sufficient accuracy to be used for altitude determination in record attempts - AED R-DAS Compact & Tiny, Perfectflite Stratologger, APRA, Firefly & Pnut, Altus Metrum Micropeak, Telemetrum & Telemega.
NOTE 6: Non-commercial altimeters/accelerometers, products under commercial development or similar avionics equipment are acceptable, but only where full documentation on the equipment, along with detailed calibration data, and flight test data, are submitted, and where the non-commercial equipment has been flown alongside a recognised calibrated commercial unit (such as one of those mentioned above) for a minimum of 10 logged flights, and has demonstrated deviation of 5% or less from the altitude recorded from the calibrated commercial unit.
NOTE 7: This rule covers multi-stage model rockets where tumble recovery may be used for booster stages, and also larger rockets in the open category, where multiple sections of a rocket may be descending under separate recovery systems.