She Flew! She Really Flew!!!!

Well guys, this past weekend, on Saturday May 11, 2002 my dad and I finally flew Thunder N' Lightning. We went up for the day and early on the weather was questionable but I decided to start prepping anyway (a good thing too, since it took three hours to prep). Finally, by about 3:15 in the afternoon the winds subsided and prep was complete. We took her out to the pad, in two stage config. for this, her first flight. She was loaded up with an I357T-M in the booster and an H123W in the sustainer with a zero second delay before ignition of the upper stage. We armed the electronics and were able to get the LCO to launch just T&L w/o any other rockets on the pads so that the electronics would not run out of battery power. This wasn't hard since dad is VP and kinda outranks the guy NO... that guy used to be the pres. Anyway, we had the count down and...nothing! I think "that guy" forgot to turn the switch on the control box but I think he did it on purpose. Anway, we recycled and tried it again and this time she lit. The I357T kicked to life and T&L was at 2000 feet in a split second. Then, about half a second after burnout, the sustainer ignited and kicked the bird to 3690 and out of sight. The booster deployed its chute and landed about 15' from me and we all waited for the upper stage to appear. We heard the ejection charge at 3690' but saw nothing. Finally, as it reached about 1000 feet, about a 1/4 mile down range, it appeared descendly rapidly under its streamer drogue. Then at 800' we heard and saw the main the deploy and she landed without a scratch on her. A PERFECT FLIGHT! Everything had gone as planned and there was no damage to anything. The only thing that was maybe a little burnt was the piston strap but I expected that. Especially since I put in a .8 gram ejection charge in each canister when the recommened in .4 grams. Oh well, I wanted to make sure that that chute was coming out no matter what! Below is a link to a pic of it at liftoff.

David Kneble


T&L Launch

Wow! Very nice pic! Gotta love those Blue Thunder flames.

Congrats on the perfect flight! It musta been a heck of a rush!

Jason

Very very very cool... Congrats!!!

Definitely a cool flight! Staged, dual deployment...awesome!

Outstanding. Superior work. You should be very proud.

CONGRATULATIONS !!!

Mav,

Absolutely excellent job bro!!! One of our club guys here finally got to launch his two stage after waiting months for the right weather and I saw the look he had went it worked, so I can almost imagine the look on your face when it launched successfully! Now, lemme see...you had WL and BT loads, Single Deploy, Dual Deploy, Timing, Altimeters and Staging...Sheesh!!! About the only thing missing was clusters and you pretty much would have covered it all!

Once again, great job for such a complex beast,

Carl

Wow, my head is starting to get bigger than Phil's. There were two things missing actually, clusters and a cert. flight. So, I guess next time, June 8, I'll have to convince dad to stuff a J350W in the booster to make it his level two flight, and duct tape on some D12's to the booster and light them on the ground. Now that'll be a flight!

Dave

Ouch!!! That hurt.