Maybe I'll have two records to my name.
Thanks the spirit! :fly:
Really great flight Chris. Glad the rocket was recovered. Sorry to hear about the cracked fillets.
-brant
Maybe I'll have two records to my name.
You can CLEARLY see that nothing is cracked in that photo. The damage must’ve happened later. L3 COMPLETE!!
Do you have any idea what caused the crack, like ground impact or something else?
Heckuva consolation prize though. Well done!
The main velocity of 44 ft/s looks way too high for a properly inflated 48" Fruity Chutes Iris. However, it is laying there perfectly in the pic Tony uploaded. Was there any evidence of tangled lines?
BTW: From the video it appears that at least one of my primary charges was undersized. If you listen you can hear a pop at apogee, silence, and then another pop and the chute came out. From looking at the video and data from the Telemetrum I'm not sure if the main came out at 1200' and just took a while to fully deploy or if the backup charge was needed there too. Gene at Fruity Chutes advised me to use a slider ring on the main chute in case of a high speed deployment and that may have caused it to take a while to fully deploy.
I had ground tested and then increased my primary charges by about 20%. The backups were another 50% larger.
Hi Chris, great video and congrats on that flight. It sounds like the perfect flight for my likes, good end result but some anomalies to dig into. I would agree with your first observation that the main apogee charge popped but failed to separate. Possibly a bit more ground testing would confirm that. As far as the slider ring, I also just started using the slider ring on my Iris Ultras coming out of my D-Bag, but I only have one flight under my belt with this config. I will have to take a closer look at the data to see if it shows any retard affect that the slider ring had on full deployment. One thing I did catch on my on-board video was a few frames of the main deployment where you can see the ring sliding down the shroud lines.
Correct.The bag forces the lines straight, the ring gradualizes(?) the opening. I think.
The main had a slider ring on it to protect it from a high speed deployment. I'm not sure if the ring caused it to take a while to deploy or if the the primary charge wasn't strong enough to deploy the main. I think the descent rate on the data chart is the average from deployment to landing. The data suggests that the rocket was slowing down during most of that period.
I took a close look at the video with DashWare so I could see the altitude. The chute came out at around 1200'. I found a couple frames that had the cap for the bay in them. I also saw one frame where the chute was deployed but still wrapped in the parachute liner. It took 300-400' to fully deploy. The landing was at ~15mph so I guess I just need to improve the strength of my fin attachment.
I have all four fins tacked to the booster and I put the first pair of fillets on last night.
I have 3 out of the 4 sets of fillets compleete. ... Rocketpoxy ...
Chris, how were the fins attached?
I took a close look at the video with DashWare so I could see the altitude. The chute came out at around 1200'. I found a couple frames that had the cap for the bay in them. I also saw one frame where the chute was deployed but still wrapped in the parachute liner. It took 300-400' to fully deploy. The landing was at ~15mph so I guess I just need to improve the strength of my fin attachment.
Man, that is some unforgiving ground to knock one of those fins loose at 15 mph (22 fps). Bad luck, but you'll get it. Maybe 1 layer of t2t after the fin is back on?
I used a 1" diameter tool to create the fillets. After the first couple pairs I considered using a 1.25" tool. I wish I had now.
I don't think T2T is necessary to handle the flight stress. I also thought about adding a strip of CF over the fillets and partially up the fin and body tube, maybe 1/2" overlap on each side.
Best "failed" L3 cert flight ever! Impressive build and flight sir, thanks again for taking the time to share the details.
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