High accuracy at M=4 is cool and all, but how many hobbyists are in that realm?
Mach 4 to Mach 5 high power/amateur rockets are rare, but they have been flown.
The RRS 50 Statute Mile Boosted Dart Project reached Mach 4.2 in 1996. A High Power Rocketry Magazine tech article on the flight is on the RASAero web site (
www.rasaero.com ) on the
< High Power, TRA Research, Amateur, High Altitude Rocket Flights Technical Report Downloads > page.
The 2004 CSXT GoFast rocket reached an apogee altitude of 380,000 ft above sea level and a maximum Mach number of Mach 5.18, with a burnout Mach number of Mach 4.99. This was the first amateur rocket to reach space by exceeding the altitude of the Karman line (100 km, 328,000 ft), and was the first hypersonic (greater than Mach 5) high power/amateur rocket.
The 2004 CSXT GoFast rocket flight data was published here on The Rocketry Forum:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/2004-csxt-gofast-flight-data.125609/
The 2014 GoFast II rocket reached 385K ft above sea level and Mach 5.4. If you’d like to see what it looks like being onboard a Mach 5 spinning sounding rocket, with a yo-yo de-spin system, reaching space, here’s the video.
Actually Mach 3 high power rockets, and high power rockets reaching just above Mach 3, are becoming more and more common.
A note on the ARCAS wind tunnel data is that the supersonic aero data was for Mach 1.5 to Mach 4.5, putting Mach 3 (the region currently of interest for high performance high power rockets) in the middle of the wind tunnel data Mach number range.
Charles E. (Chuck) Rogers
Rogers Aeroscience