Mach 3 or bust

@

BALLS 15

Flight:

Location Motor Notes
BALLS15 BRD,NV 9/30/2006 AMW O5000
AMW N4000BB

Peak altitude ~55k'
2250MPH, Mach 3+

Weather was perfect, sky was clear and the wind was almost non-existent.
I placed the remote logger's on the compass points 4 miles out from the launch site.
I put them on folding chairs so nobody would run them over.

I had the rocket ready for flight by noon but the high altitude waiver closed at noon so I had to wait till 2pm.
I went and loaded the rocket on the pad in the ever increasing wind.
Strapped it to the rail then headed back for some lunch.


On pad

At 2pm we headed back to the pad and the wind was blowing hard.
I climbed the rail and armed the rocket.
Once all armed I loaded the igniter.
Something called a 'hotdog on a stick'. It was a 1in dia x 2in long chunk of blue propellant.
I was gonna use a thermite igniter but was told that for this motor we needed something a little longer burning.

The count drew to 1 and the button was pushed and the igniter did its job.
The rocket boosted slow, very slow. It was barely stable as it left the 24foot rail.
It listed back and forth as it gained speed and finally seemed to settle on a angle over the flight line toward Gerlatch.
The sustainer lit right over the crowd and seemed to fly off at a 45deg angle.

Going to the laptop, there was no GPS data coming in. In hind site of course there wasn't because the rocket was still going up.
I head back to my trailer to get the YAGI antenna to see if I can get a signal.
I climbed up the ladder and started panning around, what's that I see?
Off in the distance I see a little yellow thingie, could that be my pilot chute? Must be the booster
I jump in the car thinking I am gonna find the booster. Nope it's not yellow it's ORANGE !!
The sustainer, wow. It's beat to hell from deploying while flying horizontal. But I don't care, I have it.
The nose cone tip was broken off during landing, but I found the tip and it was not damaged due to flight heating.

We drive over to get the remote telemetry logger out this direction while we are here and one of the BLM guys pulls up.
Said there was a yellow rocket out there and gave us the numbers. I take them figuring it must have been picked up already.
Heading back I see something yellow sticking up so I head over toward it. Wow it's the booster fin can, but nothing else, Odd.
Aparently there was so much force given the horizontal deployment that the casing was pulled free from the fincan and the fincan came in ballistic. It took a 3in core sample, but has no damage.


Booster fincan

Getting back to the range I see the upper half of the booster sitting there.
The booster parachute had every seam torn free.

I collected the remote loggers and it turns out the last one deployed recorded the telemetry from the sustainer.
I also found some notes attached to two of the loggers.


Notes


Also looking at the laptop, I should have left it out longer because it was recording packets that were coming in while it was stuffed in a duffle bag in my back seat.

Ejection charges and shear pin info

Sustainer: 3 x #4 shear pins and the charges used were Drogue=4g and Main=pinch
Booster: charges used were Drogue=6g and Main=pinch

Exceeding the speed of composites? It melted the leading edge of the fins and peeled the glass back.
You can also see the bubbling of the paint due to heating.


Peeled the fiberglass back

Here you can see where the top coat of BBQ paint got stripped off the NC and re-deposited on the body tube.
You can also see how the paint was peeling and bubbling.


Peeled and bubbled paint

The sustainer cooked the top of the booster as seen here..


Cooked booster

A couple people said I should have lapped the glass over the edge so it would not peel back.
This photo shows that the friction ablated the leading edge so it really didn't matter.


Fin leading edge

Misc photos:

Video:

Video(280k)

 

 
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