Today's launch on Thursday, May 13th, was a rather impromptu affair based on some weather condition model analysis of the Castle Rock, Colorado area observed over the past two days. Founders Park, the site of the previous week's ill-fated launch attempt, was the chosen site. A couple of fellow area rocketeers were notified of the mini-event, but Jim Gazur was the only one able to attend.
I arrived at the field at 12:00 noon to get set up and start flying some birds. The wind was variable, ranging from 2 to 9 mph. With the park located on top of a mesa, the winds tend to change direction frequently, making it difficult to ascertain an optimum launch location right away.
Jim was not scheduled to arrive until 12:30, so I went ahead and prepped the flagship EAC Viper for flight.
The model flew very nicely on A10 power, but the parachute failed to deploy, causing a fairly hard landing on the turf downrange. No damage was incurred by the model, however.
My second model sent aloft was the Estes Super Shot, the late 1990s version, for its maiden flight. Since I wasn't entirely sure about wind drift conditions yet, I put this one up on an A8-3 motor. The Super Shot is a fairly heavy mostly-plastic bird, so altitude was limited to the 150-200 foot range. The model landed nicely, and was picked up by Jim, who had just arrived, and was approaching directly in the flight line of the model.
I'm somewhat curious as to what that object appearing in the image to the left of the smoke trail is. It definitely is not part of the model or launcher.....
Jim had brought only one model to fly - the Dual Deployment Test bird that had lawn darted at Dove Valley on April 30th. The bird was repaired and ready for another test flight. While Jim went back to the parking lot to do some flight prep work at his car, I took the opportunity to trim out the Orbital Transport glider. After several tosses and trim clay adjustments, I finally had it flattening out for a satisfactory glide.
At least it flew well enough to earn my standard 'redneck' badge of approval:
While Jim was still away, I moved launch operations a bit further upwind to provide more field for some of our upcoming higher impulse flights to land in. This placed me in the general vicinity of where I had lost my launch rod the week before.
To my surprise and delight, I found the object after only about five minutes of searching.
It was a bit rusted from rain and dew, but is fully restorable for use again. Besides getting the rod back in my possession, I'm very glad that some poor grounds maintenance guy didn't have to deal with running over it with a lawn mower.....
About this time, Jim had returned to the launch area and was quickly able to get his test rocket ready and on the pad.
The model carried a load of electronics: a Perfectflight Stratologger altimeter to record flight data and trigger the dual deploy system, the pyro release mechanism itself, and a newly acquired Estes Astrocam video camera attached to the airframe to obtain images of the recovery system deployment.
The avionics bay is situated in the middle of the model, and the aft facing charge deploys the streamer at apogee pushing out the fin can as if it were a nose cone. The forward-facing charge deploys the parachute at the selected lower altitude determined by the altimeter. If the avionics fail the motor's ejection charge deploys the streamer.
Upon ignition, the model boosted nicely on a D12 motor, but for some reason weather-cocked severely.
It still reached enough altitude to allow the deployment system to work properly. A still frame from the video below attested to successful system operation.
The entire model landed on the flying field and was successfully recovered.
My next flight was an Estes Generic E2X carrying a special payload section. This unit was designed to carry both an Estes and FlightSketch Mini altimeter on the same flight, mostly to ascertain the accuracy of the Estes version.
Both altimeters were powered on and carefully loaded into the payload bay. The model was placed on the launcher.
True to Murphy's law, when I tried to connect to the FlightSketch with the app, it showed 'Device not found'. After removing the altimeter, I found no power. I couldn't get it to power on again, either. Dead as a doornail.
The E2X flew anyway, carrying only the Estes altimeter. On a B4-4 motor, the flight went well, albeit with another 'para-wad' recovery.
The altimeter read 376 feet, which Jim and I concurred as being in the ball park of the observed visual estimate.
The final flight of the day went to my Big Rage carrying an 808 keychain cam on a B6-4 motor.
The model turned in a very nice flight despite experiencing yet another un-deployed parachute! That was three out of four.
I determined the problem to be from powdering the chutes the day before while pre-prepping all the models. Even though they didn't get folded up for packing in the model box, they probably still need more powdering right before launch.
Anyway, here are some of the more interesting still frames from the Big Rage video flight..
I've included these two shots of Jim observing the model's recovery. A couple of frames showed up in the video as the model neared the ground, and the other is from the ground-based cel phone video of the flight..
It's interesting to note that the 808 video field depth makes people and objects appear to be much closer than they actually are. The video frame makes it look like the model is coming right down next to Jim when, in reality, it was well over 50 feet away.
On a final note: after I got home, I attempted to power up the FlightSketch altimeter.
It worked just fine.......
Cheers!
