On pad
@
Flight:
| Location | Motor | Notes |
| BALLS 14 BRD,NV 9/17/2005 | AMW N4000BB |
Peak altitude 26,111' |
Weather was perfect, sky was clear and the wind was almost non-existent.
I
had the rocket ready for flight at noon and waited for the rack to clear.
I
loaded the rocket on the pad and loaded the smallish thermite igniter.
It
ripped off the pad when the pushed the button. Flight had a bit of wobble off
the pad which robbed me of altitude.
Even tho this rocket went over Mach 2
there was no sonic boom from where I was.
I lost the rocket at the top so
immediately went to the GPS data, I could hear the packets over the scanner so I
knew data was coming in.
First glance at the data, 29,381!! Then I realized
it was ASL.
I entered the last reading into my GPS and we headed out to the
location.
The location was ~5miles from the launch site and was also at an
altitude of 1765'(AGL) so I knew it would drift some past this location.
As
expected when we arrived at the coordinates there was no rocket so we continued
along our path.
We stopped and I stepped outside the truck and listened
to the scanner. I had a faint signal coming in so we moved further down the
playa and it got louder.
Then we spotted the rocket, but it was in a soft
patch so I decided to get it on foot.
When I reached the rocket I realized
the main had not deployed because the NC with upper BT attached was stuck a foot
into the ground.
Too bad I left my camera in the truck.
Good thing it hit
the soft area of the playa because there was no damage.
Looking at the data
it was falling at 35fps under drogue. It landed 6miles away.
But inspecting the rocket after launch, there was some damage.
Mostly heat
related.
I melted the front of my rail buttons and the paint was all
bubbled.
There were some cool designs around the fins due to the shock
wave.
For this flight I used 3 x #4 shear pins and the charges used were Drogue=4g and Main=1/2g
These photos are of the first flight at BALLS 14 in NV.
Thanks to everyone who helped to make this a great flight.
I was so nervous I forgot to arm one of my accelerometers, but that's why we use redundant isn't it.
On pad
SUCCESS!! If I get some boost photos I will post them. Was a little squirly off the pad, not sure why.
Intact after launch
Exceeding the speed of rail buttons? It melted the forward end of
the buttons.
You can also see the bubbling of the paint due to heating.
Look, melted rail buttons
Here you can almost see where the top coat of BBQ paint got
stripped off the NC.
You can also see how the paint was peeling and
bubbling.
Peeled and bubbled paint
