FLIGHT 1
I arrived in Argonia late Friday afternoon, and after a bit of acclimation, we got down to final project integration later on that evening. First flight on Saturday was in CJ's punisher (the first official "stock class" Punisher contest flight). We slid the rocket into the tower, booted up altimeters and GPS and had everything running and ready to go. After driving back to the remote LCO table, I stepped out of the car and at that point I had a few RF packets drop (as indicated by an audio feature of the RTx system). I was a bit puzzled as we were only a few hundred yards away... The bird was launched and I again experienced some RF packet loss, and then after burnout the rocket was nowhere to be seen. I tried shifting the base radio/antenna orientation and then effectively lost all contact for awhile. Oddly after another minute or so, I picked up RF packets again and received updated bearing and distance data. We headed off in that general heading and found the bird smack dab in the middle of a fallow field. It wasn't until we picked up the rocket and drove back to the trailer that I discovered the base radio RPSMA connector had broken off. Moral of the story is that XBee RPSMA connectors are fairly "fryable" when torqued a bit. I was using the extremely long and heavy L-Com 5db duck. Definitely looking at chassis mounted reinforcement in a final design (the 3D printed case I used is a prototype). All in all a very awesome flight to 16661' AGL.
FLIGHT 2
The Base radio system was replaced and we moved to a smaller/lighter 3db duck antennal to avoid over torque of the XBee RPSMA connector. We opted to run the RTx system stand-alone as a GPS locator/transponder in CJ's Space Cowboy. The RTx was mounted in the traditional "center av-bay" with both altimeters. All checked out perfectly at base camp, so after lunch we headed out for our afternoon flight. We went back to the same tower we had flown from earlier that morning (Pad 65), but the plastic guides lining the rails had been deformed and torched off?? Anyhow, after some quick electrical tape repairs we loaded the cowboy and booted everything up. After a couple minutes it was apparent that the side mounted GPS patch antenna was butted up perfectly against one of the launch tower rails. We had booming, reliable data packets, but it was apparent the GPS couldn't acquire any nav sats... We opted to launch anyway and never lost a single RF packet during flight (albeit with no meaningful GPS location data) until the cowboy touched down. We had a Marshall tracker aboard which indicated the rocket was effectively due east (and the main was also visible buffeting in the wind). While driving in that general direction, the base radio re-aquired the rocket and we had successful locational data at that point. Saturday was effectively a "zero for two" effort, but we knew that everything was operational and had experienced a wee bit of trouble. As they say, "rockets are just another word for trouble... you've had trouble, you're having trouble, or you're "going to have trouble". Forgot to snap a pad pic here, but here's the recovery. We pushed well over 12K with this flight.
FLIGHT3
Sunday we had only a single flight in the afternoon. This time we opted for a nose mounted RTx system running again as a stand-alone GPS locator/transponder in the 98 Interceptor. We decided to fly in closer on the 50 pad's this go-round. The motor in this flight was an L995 red. Pad prep was nominal and all systems were booted and were a GO. Finally had a perfect flight with 100% RF and GPS lock entirely up and down. The Interceptor almost kissed 13K AGL, and last packet before touchdown showed it over 9000' ft out at almost a perfect NE heading. Along the way stopped and were able to re-aquire the rocket using a 900MHz yagi. We found a small "tractor track" and were able to drive out in the center of a large field for a perfect "drive to" recovery.
FLIGHT 4
Monday is departure day for most everyone, thus we had a morning only flight. We opted to re-fly the Punisher again on a special "Propellant X" motor. All prep and power-up at the pad was nominal, and the Punisher again blasted off laser straight despite the "southwind". We were once again had a "telematics treat" with data all the way up and down. What amazed me most is the fact the uBlox7 never had any perceivable drop-out or lack of GPS lock while observing the flight real-time. I know the unit cuts out at over 1000 fps, but it recovered so quickly that it was unnoticed with 1Hz update intervals on the base station LCD. Again we were able to drive out to the exact landing coordinates and pick up the bird. Another picture perfect flight to over 10500' AGL.
Despite a couple of hard-knock first flights, I'm extremely happy with the overall performance of the system. I've got a few more "tweaks" to make based on these flights and we'll finally be ready for first time "beta tests". While that's happening I can finish desktop code and work on a final beta version of the RTx board. I'll also be able to start the the Bluetooth/Modem module which will really make this system boom for high altitude flights and open up even more configuration and expansion choices for the system.