Full scale Sparrow HV-Arcus 2-stage sounding rocket

Fly high and GPS is nearly mandatory if one wants to get it back easily. As seen the winds aloft can do very strange things like spiraling and completely change drift direction opposite to the ground prevailing winds. With the scorched paint I realize that was a "proof of concept project" but any plans to repaint and fly it again. Perhaps less aggressively so the paint doesn't need to be redone every time?:wink: Kurt

With as high and fast as the final rocket will go GPS will likely lock out how are you getting around this?

markkoelsch said:

With as high and fast as the final rocket will go GPS will likely lock out how are you getting around this?

Click to expand...

Good question. Either go through the red tape and use a less restrictive system or wait until the rocket descends lower and hope it's within range when it
starts transmitting again. The highest I've ever seen quoted for a commercial GPS was about 150k'. The high altitude balloon folks were really interested as
their balloons certainly don't exceed speed limits but they like to be able to get position reporting at altitude.

Kurt

As far as GPS lock-out, that's just part of flight. How one mitigates and shortens that lock-out is one of our major concerns & will be solved before we fly. That's what all this testing is about.
Whats been learned in the last year is enormous, report on that later, with data results for year end report.


Been 1 year and 1 month since this began. So far all testing great.
Time to wrap up 1/3 scale and move on to 1/2 scale.

Airfest was full up motor test for 1/3 scale barely 4 ft. long. ....4 grain 54 K-1103-x in booster & H-399 WT 29mm in sustainer.

Attitude tickled 17,000. Spin rate 29 fps, a bit much but used full on throttle motors. Will use long burns in sustainer with less thrust to re-attain our target 14-16 fps.
Just wanted to fill the pipes and see what the little beast could do......it did not disappoint!

Have been studying tons of data for over a month, as I've said before, we are at the "week to prep"......minutes of flight....."months of studying flight data" part of the project. Including telemetry, which is the heart of the final project.

Don't really care what happens to the parts after apogee , just want full blown data on the flight!

For now some pics of what's being built next. 75min to a 54 min. with Go-Pro in NC this time to capture flight details!

More info later.

Laser cut/machined NC housing for camera and 2-GPS. Small payload on this one for "standard" DD.
clear cover will be inserted in lens opening. Metal tip removed-replace with a phenolic one in keeping with no metal in NC to interfere with telemetry. This time adding a Big Red Bee.






Carbon Uni-fiber / Quasi-Iso fins



Never seen one of these before?......probably because it's the first! Carolina Composites comes through again!



it's a 54mm CTI 6xl case with closures inside threaded, like the 75mm. For use as motor coupler/interstage for sustainer. Complete with wrench....of course.LOL!

Yes, standard CTI 6xl reloads fit right in with no modification!

Along with a head end ignition front closure, using 2 matches for redundancy.
Custom BKNO3 pellets for ignition.
{my process for pellet making, has now proven itself after many flawless ignitions}
Yes it will require an inside thrust ring for airframe.

More graphs-info-data, on Airfest flights and pics of new 3in to 54mm coming soon.

Hopefully locate a 6xl I-max for booster, already have the L-mellow for sustainer.

Super cool! Can't wait to see more.

More:

standard head end ignition for 54mm CTI 6xl [or any size for that matter, just replace the plastic one that comes with re-load] Remove O ring from grooves and move to custom Aluminum unit. Charlie made 2 sizes...one for bates grain & 1 for moon burners.....2 different wall thickness on those liners & O-ring grooves fit inside liner.

I also added E-bolt for recovery attach.

Head end ignition + separation charge on closure!

My custom 6xl case with interior threads & no external thrust ring, so I can use it for coupler to interstage on 54min sustainer to 75 min booster...along with internal closures and wrench.

CTI loads fit in either, just swap closure that comes with load. Got one for 54 AT as well.




















Fins tacked & filleted on Sustainer today.

Also stripped burnt paint off 3in.- Go Fast, in preparation for re-paint. This time with auto-poly heat cure.

I used strip-ezze and had job done, clean to fiberglass, in 10 minutes. Brush it on and wipe it off.

Also used a new technique for attaching a carbon coupler to aluminum interstage.

Rather than make interstage entirely of aluminum, save time and material by "stubbing" the 3in side of I/S with 2in stub. Freeze the aluminum [shrinks] and press fit into coupler.
Reaches room temp [expands] & you ain't ever getting it apart. Kudos to Charlie for doing the math and figuring out how many thous. over the AL had to be to shrink just perfect to fit!

Use to do this on yachts, when replacing prop shaft bearings.. Freeze bearing with dry ice.....heat struts with torch. Insert bearing, when all goes back to ambient temp...never coming out till ya freeze it again!

[Posted Jan 7 2016 Sat.] due to trouble with data extraction.

Last flight of 1/3 scale 2016 .



Data ...I'm putting this stuff here more of a record for us, than a report...LOL just like having everything in one place, for reference.

Flown on 54mm K-1103X booster to 29mm H-399 sustainer.



First time using the 29mm CTI head end ignition closure. Worked flawless. used 2 matches, inserted through BP pellet hole in top grain.
Cut down JST connector for pull-free connection at apogee. .5 BP for both charges [main-apogee]
X-chute drogue-24in. silk main. Marshall tracker under sled in bay.
Telemega altimeter.
2 matches on apogee & main with 1 charge.[.5bp both]

Pyro 3 set for 5 second delay with parameters of 1800ft altitude .
Tilt function will not work with spinning sustainer.

Booster PET timer 1 for seperation at Motor burn out. [.5 gram BP].
...........................2 for back-up apogee chute.

Stratologger CF for apogee chute booster. 1.3 grams BP [36 in chute]


Flight data sheet. [17,147 ft altitude- Mach 1.2- sustainer spin 26rps during coast........36rps during burn.....1.5-2 fps at apogee...perfect!]

Goal was staging at/around 550-650fps. So far we have been pretty much spot on.

Burn time of K-1103X 1.6 sec
electrical circuit delay .5
desired coast 5.0
Tot 7.1
pyro3 stage delay set for 7.1
desired speed at sustainer ignition 600 fps.

Showing booster burn out 1.5-1.6 sec. [sustainer drag separated here & instantly spun up full speed.....-chart for that later]

Burn out at 1500 ft altitude and 1250fps ******
Coast 5 sec. & altitude of 5,500ft.....speed of sustainer 590fps when ignition occurs.

Sustain burn time .6 sec and speed of mach 1.2 -1350fps.


Enlarged to show time detail:


NOTE 2 red blips [shock wave] on altitude line [red] punching through mach at those 2 points. First sustainer, then coast back to 575fps....hit 3rd gear...on to mach again!

Not bad getting 17,000ft out of a 4 grain 54 to a 6grain 29!

full size data shows flight.



This flew dead nutz straight up. At booster burn out, separation occurring like a boosted dart....fast & clean, no wiggle.

As sustainer slows, booster climbing straight, no roll out, almost catches sustainer!
Booster at burnout +2 sec. [going full tilt] ejects I/S and chute. Chute & I/S ripped clean from shock cord and booster continues fight.
We were not aware of any of this till after flight when those farther away reported what they had seen. From our position at away cell, we were directly under most of flight. Only when the booster impacted ground & we heard the "thud" did we realize what happened.

Apparently instead of setting the PET apogee for 20 seconds..... 2 sec was done in error.

Spin rate & distance from pad:

This project has been very revealing. Definitely landing closer to pad by spinning sustainer. Having read many research papers on this and required spin rates for vehicle size & speed, finally seeing in action, working perfectly is a thrill.
Went over 17,000 ft & landed only 900 something ft away!
This is away cell at Argonia, clearly seen is greenway to pads and the regular flight line. [well that is, if you have ever been there..lol]

Landed about 300 ft. from where the away cell tent would be.

Red target launch
Pink is under thrust.
Yellow is coast to apogee.
Turquoise descent under drogue.
Blue under main.
Black target...land



Distance/altitude chart. Track distance from launch at various altitudes, shows true flight/recovery path.
Even at 17, 000ft. only 2261ft up-range from pad.
And it was quite "breezy" as always at Argonia airfest.






Here's what did it....the "spin" factor.
Just a quick look shows the spin rate jumping up at motor burn out. Yes the booster prevents sustainer from spinning till separation. No fin cant on Booster.

First seconds of flight show a moderate roll rate of 1.5-2 revolutions-per-second.
At 1.6 seconds booster burns out [at 1.500 ft], stages separate & sustainer immediately spins up to full speed under coast....26-29 rps.
In 5 sec. of coast, sustainer reaches 5,500ft where ignition occurs sending spin rate up to 36-37 rps.
[You count the peaks or valley's between any 1 second time slot to determine spin rate. magnetometer]



BUT by apogee spin is down to 2-3 and by 2 seconds after it's arcing over/separated & pretty much done.
There was no problem with twisted/tangled lines or chutes due to spin.



That concludes spinning and landing.

Finally, one of the more interesting things data wise, you can pull from the "TELEMEGA" is satellites in view/solution, during flight.
This flight only did Mach 1.2 so we had "lock" through entire flight,even though it was spinning like a top.
I thought we would lose data transfer during high speed spinning, but that did NOT happen. A pleasant surprise.

We had 8 satellites in solution, during most of flight, down to 4-5 for 2-3 seconds for high speed section. There is a lag for data stream, so it's showing well after mach. When actually it was IN during the few seconds loss.



Only damage to 2-stager was no damage.....just loss of I/S-Marshal tracker-Stratologger. All of which have been replaced.

In retrospect tis past year was quite the success!
Of course there were the usual ups & downs associated with projects like this, but we overcame the obstacles so far!

Conclusion:

we have solved spin rate.
much closer to GPS solutions regarding mounting, antennas, and ground track.
you CAN have too much directional antenna solution. Toning down a bit was magical.
Staging timing is working well, time to increase velocity closer to mach.
Speeds kept at reasonable levels at lower atomoshpere.

Schedule on time and at budget. +10

This year 2017.... upscaling and mounting camera's for large-scale.
Bigger motors ....bigger rockets!

Guess our first flight of the 1/2 scale sustainer didn't go so well......LOL





Had a Go-Pro, Stratologger, Telemetrum & Marshal Scout on board.
We got REAL lucky. The 54 to 38 adapter [paper] kinds failed upon impact, motor shot through it & impacted the Al bulk plate.

Unfortunately the the Scout was between the motor & BP....it lost the battle.



How ever we were stupid lucky, everything else was OK. About 3 ft was underground including the camera. We dug for about 2 hrs on Sat. [this was in Feb.] getting dark and cold we gave up for the day.

Fin can came off easily, then the fun began trying to remove the payload/nosecone. It was deep in Georgia clay.





Another couple hours Sunday and out it came. Difficult getting the last foot of dirt, when your already past shoulder depth reaching in. Georgia red clay was beneath first foot and half. For those that don't know this stuff is thick-gooey heavy gunk. Not much else is worse than this stuff. It creates a hellashish suction, you cannot pull anything out, you must dig down to the last 2-3 inches.

Anyhow the graph showed altimeter fired both drogue and main, but neither BP charge was burnt! After firing both charges with direct contact to a battery, we do not have an answer to
"what Happened".

BUT we do have video of complete flight and the "underground" boring machine. The flights around 20 seconds then complete darkness. Suddenly there is a red blinking??? Turns out while recording an LED blinks every second and enough light was going through the airframe lens cover to illuminate the dirt outside. At least we got a few laughs:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5jIM54rw-hocDBnT0ZVMEF2SVk/view

Yeah anytime the picture turns upside down bad things are gonna happen. To my knowledge this is the first camera to survive impact and keep recording 3-4 ft underground!

Only needed a new BP & some all thread And it's ready to go again.

:dark: Charlie had printed a cage to keep Go Pro in and it saved the day...needed another of those printed also, but as I said entire rocket and contents other than aforementioned above are proof of his composite skills building really tough tubes!

This is the new interstage coupler, a page right out of the real deal.

This is a 2 contact point affair. Charlie drew in CAD then machined this work of art, made of Delrin.

It can only be used on 1 motor as nozzle exit cones vary.
The tip fit mates into the exit cone of the mellow load & bottom has a flange that fit into the airframe.



A new extended exit cone was machined from phenolic, the whole assembly get screwed onto rear of motor, extending it 3 inches..... you'll see when I get more photos.

It's a free floating I/S that will separate upon booster burn out, like a dart..instantly

So this test mule is my 3in. minimum to 54 min.diameter. Full up will be the I-max 6xl M-2245 to a Mellow L-265.

A new CTI 54mm motor case had to be made ,with interior threads to we could extend the case 3 inches past nozzle for the new exit cone. An extra long threaded closure ring was also made, similar to one used with 75 tailcones.


PS: decided to replace the fins, bevel was off on one side, causing the unwanted spin [on this version only!]
Airframe placed on concrete floor and then stood on, jumped on, stomped on. FINS would NOT COME OFF.
Fillets had to be removed with a chisel further proof of the bonding power of Hysol we use.

You would not think that was even possible!

Oh, my!

Cheers,
Michael

I/S coupler:

This is the 1/2 scale stage of our project. At this point testing of full scale interstage & photography is needed, or rather the "type" of I/S that will be used.

Cone type that fits inside the nozzle is what was used on many sounding rockets, we will do same.
This require making phenolic exit cone extension, so a large enough "cone" can support the stack.
Nozzle cone on a Mellow 54 6xl is tiny, only the tip of I/S fits.

Project required re-designing CTI 54 motor case as explained in earlier posts. Ours now has an AL forward closure set up for head end ignition with 2 matches for redundancy & utilizes a BKNO3 pellet for ignition. This has been flown several times in 29-38-54mm so it passes muster. [can be re-used]
Rear closure now "threads" on internally, so motor can fit "inside" minimum diam. airframe & also accept a threaded extended closure ring so the case extension can be seamlessly added.

This extension contains the phenolic exit cone extension of nozzle. Before anyone asks...this has been done before in testing and NO there is no loss of thrust, etc. to be concerned with. The exit angle is same as nozzle.

Components:

Showing phenolic insert, which is glued into carrier.
As of now considered single use.
All these parts are motor specific.
They only work for one nozzle size, and must be configured differently for any motor used, other than the L-265 mellow.

This gets screwed onto threaded extended closure.
Nozzle inserted into top and entire assembly ready for adding to motor.






Looking down into assembly, you see phenolic butting the actual nozzle.

Keep in mind when viewing, things are "dry" assembled for pics & not threaded tight, glued or finish fitted.....................


Nozzle extension assembly screwed into motor, ready for use.




Showing fit.



Motor will be pushed up flush with airframe. [actually 1/4in inside]
The airframe will slide over the "flat" at bottom of I/S cone, locking it into position.




The sustainer easily lifts off, but is held firmly in place, no play whatsoever.
There are a few more bugs to work out but hoping for a test flight in June.
Fire Booster with full load in sustainer, no ignition, just test separation of new I/S
So after recuperating from the last fiasco...progress is being made.

Working on full scale sustainer to test this summer [spin & Go-Pro] along with full stack 1/2 scale.

That's very cool. Amazing engineering is going into this one! Anxious to see the flight results.

Looking great!

Good luck to you and Charlie. Hope this will make it to Airfest.

Extremely impressive engineering. You Guys must have access to one hell of an expensive machine shop. All the best Luck on your test flights.

Thank you...gentlemen.

Finishing touches being done this week in preparation for Airfest flight.
3inch Carbon rocket from last AF will be Booster with a 5grain M .
I/S will have 2 Altimeters Missleworks RRC2's for recovery/ deploy, of booster
No separation charge needed for this as you can see above.

Sustainer 54mm minimum , L-265 Mellow .
This has a tiny payload section [ala Arcus] will contain recovery gear.
Payload coupler holds TeleMetrum + RRC3 +Marshall Scout [Rf tracker]
NC is only section not carbon. Holds Go-Pro camera+TeleMega [GPS tracking] + Missleworks RTx [Gps tracking]

Telemetrum handles staging and will be set: NO fire unless...tilt less than 20 deg....Altitude greater than 2500ft....[velocity drops to 1100fps or 8sec delay, which ever happens first.]

At least that's the plan...they can always change...LOL

This is great, I've always liked the sparrow Arcas. This was my first and only highpower two stage model I built, 4" booster to 2.6 upper, I to G motors, It used drag separation and in 94 when I flew it was using a cantilever arm/micro switch liftoff detector, linked to a flash bulb and thermalite burning up through the nozzle in a teflon tube, exposed at the top to light the second stage. I had an RC pratt unit for backup ejection in case it didn't light, but even though I never needed it, I always used the RC unit after the actual ejection happened just to see if it would work, it never did in 3-4 flights..standing next to the rocket was fine, but it never worked in the air. I'm glad we have progressed to much better electronics now.

This is going to be an awesome flight - never seen an L265 by have always wanted to. You know what day you will fly this?
Hoping to watch this flight - we will be there Sat and Sunday

Thread has been moved to airstarts/staging and pictures resized.

Nick@JET said:

This is going to be an awesome flight - never seen an L265 by have always wanted to. You know what day you will fly this?
Hoping to watch this flight - we will be there Sat and Sunday

Click to expand...

This is my 5.5" Motoreater on one, about 20 lb. on the pad.

blackjack2564 said:

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View attachment 319484

How ever we were stupid lucky, everything else was OK. About 3 ft was underground including the camera. We dug for about 2 hrs on Sat. [this was in Feb.] getting dark and cold we gave up for the day.
BUT we do have video of complete flight and the "underground" boring machine. The flights around 20 seconds then complete darkness. Suddenly there is a red blinking??? Turns out while recording an LED blinks every second and enough light was going through the airframe lens cover to illuminate the dirt outside. At least we got a few laughs:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5jIM54rw-hocDBnT0ZVMEF2SVk/view

Yeah anytime the picture turns upside down bad things are gonna happen. To my knowledge this is the first camera to survive impact and keep recording 3-4 ft underground!!

Click to expand...

The Mars InSight team should have consulted with you guys for the latest borer mission!

CJ @blackjack2564 whats up with this project?? No updates in years at this point!!

I've spent over an hour reading through all this only to find out its hit a dead end!!

Its like a mystery novel with no ending!!