Thanks to all of you for your interest.
I've refrained from posts or comments about the RRC3 project until the design was a bit more mature and the alpha test crew had logged some data collection and deployment-duty flights... suffice it to say the alpha team has done a great job of testing, flying, bug-smashing, and feature-creeping. For the older flyers, you may recall that back in 2003/2004 I embarked up a new avionics project (the mPAC). The RRC3 project has many of the attributes developed during the mPAC project, except the RRC3 is faster/better/cheaper.
We're in the final phase of alpha testing... the 3rd and hopefully "final version" of alpha hardware should be in the hands of the alpha test crew sometime next week. The goal of this alpha version is to test the anticipated final configuration of all the system hardware and software. The team will be flushing out and validating all aspects of the design so I can move into "beta testing".
The beta test objective is to have the hardware and software
as close as possible to the finished "consumer ready" version. During the initial beta testing, the team and myself will be working on the last and final task of documentation (and there's a lot to document).
I'm looking to expand the alpha team from (5) individuals into (8) individuals for the beta test team when the documentation is finally in shape. I've potentially enlisted a local flyer here in Colorado for beta test (still waiting for him to agree), so I'll need at least 2 (or 3) more flyers to volunteer their services... I need *active* flyers who are willing to go beyond their comfort zones and actively test, evaluate, and engage in the entire testing process. You need to have an XP based PC (MAC software coming) at a minimum, and you need to be a registered member of TRF so you can log into our project forum. Please email to
[email protected] if you'd like to be considered. Please describe the types of rockets and flights you make, and your opportunities for launch events... you also get to keep all your beta test hardware for participating.
One last request to all that are reading...
I'm looking for additional *extreme* barometric flight data, specifically to characterize the worst case sonic/subsonic "mach transitions" at motor burnout to ensure the RRC3 can algorithmically compensate. This barometric data can be from *any* commercial recording altimeter out there as long as there's an available PC compatible viewer and/or a means to dump the barometric data into Excel.
Here's the area of the flight regime I'm interested in:
Please email, or post your data here in this thread.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Jim