Today, I took advantage of some warm, windless weather conditions to slip out and fly a couple of model rockets at the Douglas County High School practice field. My wife accompanied me on this venture, enjoying the benefit of setting up her lawn chair in the shade of a small tree right next to the launch pad.
The first model on the launcher was the EAC Viper.
After an initial launch failure - the igniter wires were crossed - the bird turned in a very nice flight on an A10-3T motor.
At ejection, the parachute stuck together, but finally caught air and deployed fully when the model had fallen to about fifty feet above the turf. The model landed twenty feet away from the launch pad and was recovered intact.
Next up was the Griffin-2 custom rocket. For this flight the model was equipped with a payload bay designed to carry dual altimeters for comparison test purposes: the Estes version and a FlightSketch Mini.
The model launched nice and straight on a B6-4 motor. Again, the model experienced a para-wad. I seem to be plagued with these things recently, even though great care is taken in powdering and packing the devices.
Despite this, the model landed nearby without sustaining any airframe damage.
The Estes altimeter returned a reading of 396 feet, while the FlightSketch recorded 362.5 feet. That's a difference of 34 feet. There still may be issues with the Estes unit involving introducing a small amount of air pressure during the process of loading the device into the payload bay.
This problem doesn't occur with the FlightSketch, because the device is armed remotely after the unit has already been packed into the payload bay. More such tests are planned for the near future.
Anyway, I was delighted to obtain a good data download from the Mini.
And, I was equally delighted to get another short flying session accomplished!
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