Full scale Sparrow HV-Arcus 2-stage sounding rocket

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Path_Over_Trees 9.01.36 PM.jpg Probable_Direction 9.01.31 PM.jpg Well last weekend was our local launch. We went armed with a drone carrying camera in hopes of locating the lost Booster from the 2-stage, last time out. Even though it had a tracker in it at apogee we lost signal. The descent was clearly visual, but we lost it after coming in behind a tree line across the street from our field.

A month had passed & we've had torrential rains , since it is the sub tropics here. No luck with the camera after an hour of fooling around.

BUT...at the launch last month we had a German flier come visit us. [Leo Nutz] He had taken a photo just as the booster crossed the tree line. After some Voo-Doo with his photo & google earth, he sent me a pic with the line of site drawn on it.

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It showed probable landing cutting the diagonal across the corner of 2 streets. We had spent hours in that field previously, on the same line but over to right about 700 ft.
We could actually line up a telephone pole with a tall tree and began to walk the line. Charlie was whacking his way through the 6ft tall weeds, when he almost stepped on our fincan! The rains had grown the weeds completely over the rocket, it was under a mess of them. No way the drone/camera could see it. But thanks to Leo all ended well!

Motor case, timer, interstage, tracker...everything intact after a month of wet weather. We were very lucky......AND I solved the lost signal mystery.
After opening the case, it was clear there was a violent event. Battery was held in with 2 wraps of electrical tape, same as I've always done for years. Battery had stretched the tape on one end & was out of box/connector. Booster was flown motor eject. Chute and cord on top of motor...tracker on top of all. When ejection occurred the tracker was "pushed" into the 2lb aluminum I/S, where I believe it hit with enough force to knock battery out. New battery showed no damage to tracker, & next launch I will install altimeter into I/S so ejection charge "pulls" the tracker out.
 
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DSCN5937.jpg DSCN5931.jpg DSCN5932.jpg DSCN5939.jpg DSCN5941.jpg DSCN5953.jpg All that aside..... was at Carolina Composites over the weekend...working on a 75mm minimum as test mule for telemetry on the big one. 17 wraps carbon uni-prepreg, with a layer of 5.3oz over it "just because" [I'll paint it anyhow]. Fins are carbon uni plate 3/16, with big honk'n fillets...no T-T. Expected speeds around M-2.5 ish, so leading edge angle cut to fit. Airframe is a few inches longer than optimum to make testing easier.

If it survives, I will optimize it . First flight on M-1450, I have 2.
Main in NC and drogue in fincan. Standard DD...BUT the coupler/NC shoulder is double wall thick, so It was tapered to fit into cone further. gained an inch by doing this.

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Vent band on coupler is Fiberglass. We cut a 1 in window in the carbon, where the GPS patch antenna will fit, then covered with the RF transparent vent band. Still have to figure out the radio antenna issue [maybe].

I got a stick of cotton/canvas phenolic and Charlie turned a tip for cone, replacing the aluminum one. There will be NO metal in cone. Tip has hole bored in center for GPS radio antenna, it's actually outside the main cone, only 1/4 from end of tip! [another GPS in NC bay mounted all the way in front, behind tip. I will expound on this arrangement later, when I have some pics that show how things fit. If this works out, I "think" we may have solved the antenna issue, we'll just make an entire cone out of phenolic with a fiberglass coupler/core to stiffen it.
Solves...transparency issues...heat...ablative everything! Further testing will tell.

We plan on multiple telemetry, some for recovery of electronics separately from rest of rocket & fincan too.

Voo-Doo the test bird photos:

Laser cut fin jig...tacked on one fin with CA to hold jig position, while glueing on other 3 fins. Then broke off first, and glued on with Hysol.

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Finished fincan 53 inches long. There will be no T-T..just large Hysol fillets holding things together.
More later as things progress.....

We're moving on to 1/2 scale version of Arcus sustainer. So far tests [1/3]have been great, & no further deemed needed , but the 1/3 scale will fly full up motors at Airfest, just to see what it is capable of. Should be fun.
 
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I'm very thrilled to read that the booster was found and obviously very happy that I was able to help out.

Looking very much forward to the progress of your project!
 
Super cool. I like the cotton phenolic nosecone tip. I was thinking about having Carolina Composites turn a graphite tip for mine. But if I can steal your idea, cotton phenolic might be better.
 
Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 11.49.44 PM.png Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 11.50.21 PM.png 20160727_103617.jpg 20160728_161255.jpg 20160801_132149.jpg 20160721_175143.jpg 20160727_102243.jpg Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 11.32.54 PM.jpg 20160727_102250.jpg 20160727_102256.jpg More progress on the test mule for Airfest.
There will be an abundance of electronics in this nose cone.

In the tip is tiny av-bay for a stand alone GPS.
Coupler/NC shoulder is 10in long with 3 in vent band. We have tossed the carbon version & Charlie made another double wall fiberglass coupler. No worries about RF transparency. After much re-thinking, we believe we can do same for full scale version.
In the coupler will be:
Telemega GPS/Altimeter
RRC3 altimeter
Stratologger Altimeter
Missileworks GPS

Marshall falcon tracker....yep 3GPS....3 altimeters...1 RF tracker. This is to test functionality of all electronics.
Power switches will be Fingertech robotics, used in combat robots.

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Ordered some phenolic rod from Mac Carr and ditched the metal tip. Charlie turned a beautiful new one and glued it in, there is a hole center drilled for the GPS antenna. It will run through the tip within 1/4 in of point.
Charlie gets full credit for machining all the following items shown. His work is impeccable! He calls me a machinists nightmare...LOL

The cone with GPS av-bay installed.

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After turning to match cone and some epoxy to polish. You cannot "find" the joint. There is no differential between parts, they are as one.

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Fully assembled bay [29mm tube] glued to a centering ring. Edge of ring tapped for caphead screws, which hold the Bulkplate, with sled glued on & eyebolt for recovery gear attachment. Left side of tube is deceiving, that is not a small BP, it's been turned down to fit further in the tip of cone.

BP with sled sitting on top of CR/tube. Just enough room for battery and GPS.


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This is what ya see when peering into the cone & the tiny sled inside tube.
Antenna will stick out open end & slide into the phenolic tip. Designed such that antenna has full straight extension. hopefully we'll have a Boom'n signal!

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Motor chosen for flight, KBA M-1450 in AMW 7600 case at Airfest.
 
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That's super cool, Jim. Way slick.

I think I might steal your nosecone tip idea, if you don't mind. I was going to do graphite, but I like the phenolic better.
 
That's super cool, Jim. Way slick.

I think I might steal your nosecone tip idea, if you don't mind. I was going to do graphite, but I like the phenolic better.

Have one on a 3" nose cone I have had to Mach 3.6 with no damage to the cone or tip.

Dennis
 
Jim, As always love your impeccable design and workmanship. Watching with great interest.........
 
Interesting. The phenolic NC tip was so the antenna of the Tele-GPS could be fully extended to squeeze every last bit of range out of it. I'm impressed. If you're using a Tele-BT, velcro it to a 7 element yagi for about the best one
could expect for a ground station. Use Altos-Droid and there is supposed to be voice narration buried in there a' la Kate. Plus anyone could monitor the APRS portion of the Tele-GPS with any Kenwood D72 or Yaesu VX-8's or Ft-1DR.
Could do it simultaneously. Just announce the frequency and anyone who will be tracking with a Beeline GPS tracker will be able to tune their ground station to the Tele-GPS and monitor with you. Kurt
 
That's super cool, Jim. Way slick.

I think I might steal your nosecone tip idea, if you don't mind. I was going to do graphite, but I like the phenolic better.

By all means, do. Well we found out why no ones doing enter cones out of phenolic.....sheeesh, a 4.5 in stick 4 ft long costs 1480.00 bucks! Anyone comes across a scrap yard for the stuff or has some they'll never use...let me know!

Have you ever considered dropping the heavy and large-volume eyebolt in favor of a tie-rod end? They are significantly smaller and plenty strong.

https://www.mcmaster.com/#tie-rod-ends/=13ksviw

Those do look quite useful. In our case the eyebolt served as a "handle" for fitting purposes. It will be replaced with a kevlar loop, in keeping with no metal in NC..Yeah I know..there are a few screws.

Have one on a 3" nose cone I have had to Mach 3.6 with no damage to the cone or tip.

Dennis

What project was that Dennis?

Jim, As always love your impeccable design and workmanship. Watching with great interest.........

Very, very cool.

Thanks guys... don't forget Charlies the other half of all this! Couldn't do it with out him.

Interesting. The phenolic NC tip was so the antenna of the Tele-GPS could be fully extended to squeeze every last bit of range out of it. I'm impressed. If you're using a Tele-BT, velcro it to a 7 element yagi for about the best one
could expect for a ground station. Use Altos-Droid and there is supposed to be voice narration buried in there a' la Kate. Plus anyone could monitor the APRS portion of the Tele-GPS with any Kenwood D72 or Yaesu VX-8's or Ft-1DR.
Could do it simultaneously. Just announce the frequency and anyone who will be tracking with a Beeline GPS tracker will be able to tune their ground station to the Tele-GPS and monitor with you. Kurt

Yes...the tip idea is exactly for optimizing range. We have [2] 1/2 wave antenna's on the way, for the Tele & Missileworks. They will be on forward BP and extend up into NC. Each will have it's own tiny tube to fit into glued on wall of NC. To keep them from entangling in recovery gear.

Yes on the T-BT,velcro & antenna [7 element Arrow]
Played around with the "voice". Maybe later with that, got enough on the plate to deal with now.

There will be at least 2 ground stations located several miles apart for tracking, the big one. Might have the second to play with by AF.:smile:
 
Jim,

Last year at Balls I flew a 75mm 47" long finacyl grain motor worked out to be a N 3700. At about 11,000' and Mach 3.6 the carbon fiber payload gave up. Nose cone was just fine.ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1470363087.069188.jpg
 
Yes...the tip idea is exactly for optimizing range. We have [2] 1/2 wave antenna's on the way, for the Tele & Missileworks. They will be on forward BP and extend up into NC. Each will have it's own tiny tube to fit into glued on wall of NC. To keep them from entangling in recovery gear.

Yes on the T-BT,velcro & antenna [7 element Arrow]
Played around with the "voice". Maybe later with that, got enough on the plate to deal with now.

There will be at least 2 ground stations located several miles apart for tracking, the big one. Might have the second to play with by AF.:smile:

Cool, with the "aft" GPS trackers I did something similar in a Wildman Jr. Put a Beeline GPS up top in the ebay and stuck a Raven aft for deployment services. Made the mistake of painting the upper tube with metallic paint and after suffering no packets on a 3" Wildman Stretch on an L1400 that was metallic painted, I stripped the paint off the upper tube and used straight yellow. No problem. I use a tight hole in the forward bulkhead to push the antenna through and a duct tape wrapped cardboard tube that AT wired igniters come in for a stent so the main parachute doesn't "smush" the antenna down. Stenting works fine. I've had seven sight unseen flights from launch to landing with the WMJr out of 10 total and find it quickly every time. Really something when one doesn't have any idea where to start a search to use a GPS tracker and proceed to the last known position and either pick up the rocket directly or get an updated position while proceeding out and get it no muss, no fuss.

With three devices on this project, I don't know how you could miss. A further edge might be gained if you have an updated simulation with a recent winds aloft prediction and place somebody with a receiving station downrange on the possible plot. Of course, might not be that helpful if the rocket gets "cocked" and goes in a different direction.

If there's a Ham guy or group nearby, someone could monitor the APRS packets with a laptop/tablet on a map and consider a patch antenna for the ground station for the 900Mhz Missileworks GPS tracker. If I'm not mistaken, the Missileworks monitors the raw NMEA sentences coming across? If so, the Android GPS Rocket Locator app is refined now to download maps for offline storage and allows for WiFi only devices to be used now. Just pair the Android tablet to the Missileworks receiver via Bluetooth and have a mapping solution there too. I've ground tested GPSRL and it looks really impressive now.

If you can catch the Arcas on descent and get some packets as it's getting lower, you can develop and trend line on the map and see where to proceed even if it gets out of radio range. It's a small rocket and if it's within 3/4 of a mile, a live map would tell you were to
place your eyes to try to get a visual for the expected main deployment.

I once had a flight where the WildmanJr (which is probably a bit larger than your HV Arcas) land .66mi away from me. I looked exactly where the live map told me to and I saw nothing of the 36" main chute or the rocket. The packets showed the descent slowed and when I walked right up to the rocket, it was stretched out beautifully and obvious the deployment events occurred as planned. Not a scratch on the paint even. Kurt
 
Jim,

Last year at Balls I flew a 75mm 47" long finacyl grain motor worked out to be a N 3700. At about 11,000' and Mach 3.6 the carbon fiber payload gave up. Nose cone was just fine.

That's a sad ending to a cool rocket. But as we all know if you're doing this extreme stuff, it ain't ALL coming back, all the time...LOL My track record ain't so good......hoping to change it.LOL

A further edge might be gained if you have an updated simulation with a recent winds aloft prediction................................ and place somebody with a receiving station downrange on the possible plot.

Probably spend more time doing that, weeks in advance than can be imagined. It will determine, when & where launch occurs. There will be someone WAY downrange at the highest possible vantage point for tracking.


If there's a Ham guy or group nearby, someone could monitor the APRS packets with a laptop/tablet on a map and consider a patch antenna for the ground station for the 900Mhz Missileworks GPS tracker. If I'm not mistaken, the Missileworks monitors the raw NMEA sentences coming across? If so, the Android GPS Rocket Locator app is refined now to download maps for offline storage and allows for WiFi only devices to be used now. Just pair the Android tablet to the Missileworks receiver via Bluetooth and have a mapping solution there too. I've ground tested GPSRL and it looks really impressive now.

Already done & done, on with mapping offline & pretty much all of above points you make, on all test flights so far...remember I've had the Missileworks Rtx for a year now beta testing. We're discussing pro/cons of getting a patch right now. 3 types of antenna's will be used, until final type chosen, based on range & directionalcality . [like that word..LOL]

If you can catch the Arcas on descent and get some packets as it's getting lower, you can develop and trend line on the map and see where to proceed even if it gets out of radio range. It's a small rocket and if it's within 3/4 of a mile, a live map would tell you were to
place your eyes to try to get a visual for the expected main deployment.

I once had a flight where the WildmanJr (which is probably a bit larger than your HV Arcas) land .66mi away from me. I looked exactly where the live map told me to and I saw nothing of the 36" main chute or the rocket. The packets showed the descent slowed and when I walked right up to the rocket, it was stretched out beautifully and obvious the deployment events occurred as planned. Not a scratch on the paint even. Kurt

Well actually the Arcus sustainer, is QUITE a bit larger than a Wildman JR....this is a full scale Hv- Arcus...4.5 in diameter, 9ft tall on a N-motor. It will be carrying [2] 1 watt radios.
The Marshall is along for finding it, once at closer range , should it end up in some brush, side of mountain, etc etc...LOL You're thinking of the 1/3 scale, which has done it's job, we're on to larger now.
But I "get" what your saying and agree 100%. Your comments are appreciated & welcomed.
 
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Wow, you're set! The 70cm band should have some propagation advantages over 900Mhz but if the 1watt radio
is on 900Mhz that would erode that. Once the rocket is down, a 900Mhz Yagi is small enough to carry and I've proven to myself it can can improve the ground footprint of a 100mW 900Mhz tracker. The narrow beamwidth can be aimed pretty easily at a stationary object. The 900Mhz Yagi is not advisable for flight tracking as the narrow beamwidth is hard to keep aimed at a rapidly moving object.

If you get a good lock on one of the three systems you plan to fly, a 900Mhz Yagi would be superfluous 'cause
you'll be able to get within the ground footprint anyways. Still look on ebay, they're pretty cheap and even one with a long boom is easier to carry portable than a patch. The patch of course is best for in-flight monitoring with the broader beamwidth on 900Mhz.

Boy, tracking is covered as long as the motors and staging events are pulled off successfully.:smile:
Kurt
 
DSCN0011.jpg DSCN0012.jpg DSCN0004.jpg DSCN0008.jpg Screen Shot 2016-08-21 at 2.46.07 PM.jpg 20160809_172440.jpg Airfest is just around the corner. [next week!] We have finally finished up "Radio Free Europe", nickname for our Electronics test bed.

3in NC with a 11in. coupler shoulder/av-bay.
3in vent band, needed to be this long for Gps patch antennas and switch mounting.
Forward BP is recessed into coupler right at front edge of vent band. This gives us 10.5 in for recovery gear between the 2 bays. Another small bay in front tip of cone for sand alone Tele-GPS and battery.
Antenna fully extended straight into phenolic NC tip.

Behind that 12in nomex contains 27ft of 1/4 in. kevlar & a Fruity Chute 36 Iris. This nestles between the 2 radio antenna's.
One is 1/2 wave whip. for Missleworks GPS, and 1/4 whip for Telemaga GPS in coupler av-bay.
These 2 GPS units mounted on one side of sled.
Tie rods are only # 6 all thread in keeping with "less is 'Mo betta " regarding metal.

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One other side of sled are Missleworks RRC3 & Stratologger ,direct mounted to sled.
Above that on elevated sled are 3 Lipo's .

On Bulkplate are 3 switches that power everything. 2 units [RRC3 & GPS] on 1 switch. Little white squares are switches, activated by a 2-256 cap head screws,countersunk into the delrin block.

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That's 3 GPS
3 altimeters
4 Lipo's
1 tracker

On 2.75 x 6 inch sled. Well actually 1 gps in NC tip...LOL

All this and recovery in NC/av-bay package weighing 3.1 lbs ready to fly. Apogee charges contained in 2 aluminum canisters holding .75 & 1.2 BP charges. Only 5.5 in recovery space [apogee] between motor & av-bay. This holding 25 ft of 9/16th TN and 18in. Spherachute heavy duty drogue. Main charges 1 and 1.2 for main in glove tips wrapped in tape and punctured with needle.

All this sitting atop a CTI-6Xl M-1545 green in the 53 in fincan. Fully loaded for flight 23.5 lbs. 413lbs thrust / 23.5 = 17.6 -1 thrust.

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This motor is relatively neutral burn for 5 seconds.

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Believe it or not I actually came out ahead for once with CP/CG sims were at 2.4 and actually weighing/finding GC gave me 3.1 calipers stability.

I painted the carbon rocket white, not wanting to deal with heat issues in av-bay.

So we tested 2-wice last weekend by sitting "radio free Europe' atop my Punisher & 2 grain 54 J-275. Flight 1 went well, though Charlie & I looked a bit silly with a base unit in each hand.[4 total]
1 for Missleworks
1 Telemega
1 TeleGPS
1 for Marshall rF

Actually five.....blue-toothed signal to phone for live flight overlay on map. [Remember all this is for Radio testing]
Lessoned learned:

Too much to follow for 2 guys.
Next flight was just Me on Missleworks & Comm-Spec.
Charlie on Telemega blue toothed to phone.

Rest of back ups running with bases "on the ready" in case something we monitored, pooped the bed.

Sunday went real bad......whipped of rail, straight over wood and lands atop 100ft. tall.... old growth Southern yellow pine.
Got back my 2000.00 payload. Left 8 in morning...got back 5.30.
Was 97ft on top of crown/southern yellow pine! Took all day to get it out.
Failure to retrieve was NOT an option.

After exhausting several methods, slingshot with fishing lead sinker, tied to mono-filimant line, shot over cordage.
Fincan and payload on edge of branch in crown of pine. Shock cord stretched over to tall Oak.
5th try up and over, then pulled a more robust line up and over... much pulling & swearing an hour later we had it back, all in good order no damage.

Next time flying in the minimum at Airfest for full scale testing on the M-1545

Will fly the 1/3 scale on full up stack of 4 grain 54 K-1103-X to 6 grain 29 white thunder.

Finally the 2 stage Punisher. M-1440 to 6xl K-805 white.

All these flights to test:
scale sustainer spin. timing staging by time & velocity. radio range with various antenna's AND our newly redesigned head end ignition .

If all bodes well, on to the Full Scale sustainer where all the electronics + a camera will go!:wink:
 
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Wow!

Nothing more I can say, just wow. Good luck!
 
Although Radio Free Europe is a nice name, instead I might call it the Rubik's Cube cause it had to be one tough puzzle to get all that together!
 
Try and set your 70cm trackers to dissimilar frequencies to avoid harmonics. I suspect that will be easy to do with both Altus Metrum units as the frequencies I believe are limited. I have a Tele-GPS and a Tele-BT. Make sure the 900Mhz is not
on a harmonic. Since you've test flown, looks like it turned out O.K. except for the tree thing.

You're right............ Three GPS units best to have one person on each receiver or perhaps one could monitor two GPS streams. Team approach might be smart here. I take it you're using Altos-Droid? Did you try the voice reporting with that software? I didn't know it was there until I turned the volume up on my device!!

If the MissileWorks does a 1/sec NMEA update, would be interesting how it compares to the 70cm units in flight but you can download the positions that can be stored at a higher rate in the Tele-GPS and Mega I believe.

Be glad it didn't land on a 66,000V transmission line. Had a friend that had that happen. He lucked out in the local power co-op came out, threw some breakers so the few houses would still have power and killed the line the rocket was draped over.
Flier asked how much he owed them and they replied nothing as they didn't want anyone to touch that line trying to recover "stuff" from it! Don't know how other public service utilities respond but this one was pretty nice. Kurt
 
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Try and set your 70cm trackers to dissimilar frequencies to avoid harmonics. I suspect that will be easy to do with both Altus Metrum units as the frequencies I believe are limited. I have a Tele-GPS and a Tele-BT. Make sure the 900Mhz is not
on a harmonic.

Kurt

2 bases- 2 frequencies for the Tele's. No issue there.
Could you expound a bit on the "900Mhz harmonics" thing?
Only using 1 of those, so I don't get your drift.
 
2 bases- 2 frequencies for the Tele's. No issue there.
Could you expound a bit on the "900Mhz harmonics" thing?
Only using 1 of those, so I don't get your drift.

This guy does explains it better than me: https://www.w0abr.com/ham-stories/ham-articles/signals-from-the-real-world

Since you already flew it and had no trouble should be fine. In reality a second order harmonic on 434Mhz would be 868Mhz which wouldn't be a problem to those of us in the U.S. but some European countries use 868Mhz so could be an issue for them. I stand corrected in that 900mhz harmonics are no where near 70cm.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page here: https://dk7xe.blogspot.de/2014/09/ap510-avrt5-aprs-tracker-hf-signal.html
you can see the harmonics from the AP510 1 watt APRS tracker. Ideally, you wouldn't want a harmonic from 70cm (400Mhz) tracker to land on your 33cm (900Mhz) tracker.

Incidentally, I saw posted in TRF a fellow flew one of these 510's in a rocket and he loves it. Only good for tracking and finding as the Sirf IV chipset isn't accurate in a high dynamic states
for altitude reporting. A balloonist flew a project with a Beeline GPS with a Ublox chipset that's good for altitude reporting along with the AP510. He sent me the recorded data that showed a good
correlation with altitude between both units. The kicker here is the balloon flies sooooooooo, slow. Drifts along nicely at altitude. John Coker has showed wild readings from a SIRF chipset as far
as altitude goes with high dynamic rocket flights. The lat/long positioning for SIRF chipsets are still accurate and perfectly fine to find one's sport rocket. Can always download the altitude
from the electronics. If one is shooting for a stupid high record, one has to use a unit with an approved chipset for altitude reporting to compensate for baro inaccuracies in electronics in the rarefied ether.

One watt in a large diameter nosecone with a 1/4 wave antenna will really get a signal out as long as the deployment electronics don't malfunction in the presence of the 1 watt Rf field.
The onboard micro simm will save the track for download later.

You have three GPS trackers in a nice installation. You only need one to work to find it in an extreme situation. Hopefully all will send data that will be neat to compare. Kurt
 
DSCN0009.jpg DSCN0004.jpg DSCN0006.jpg DSCN0001.jpg DSCN0003.jpg Screen Shot 2016-09-11 at 6.33.57 PM.jpg Screen Shot 2016-09-11 at 6.31.42 PM.jpg Screen Shot 2016-09-11 at 6.22.09 PM.jpg Airfest was a grand success. Many things proven. Many more to be solved, but at least they are known.....now.
We were a bit south of 30,000 ft. look at the data chart below.

Here are some shots of "Radio Free Europe" the aftermath. Remember all this is just to sort out what works best for us telemetry wise, & will be riding in the full scale project.

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The nosecone & fincan WERE painted bright Chevy Orange.
Undercoat was 1200* grill paint, but we all knew that would not last either. Most of paint on cone was clean gone other than a streak or 2.

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Fincan faired a bit better, but was scorched severely considering the data says it only went M-2.1 but charts shows it was in that regime for over 10 seconds.

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Tilt angle shows it was off vertical by 20 degrees due to winds, lost quite a bit of altitude to that.

Basic Data chart from Telemega.... more to come after we sort through it a bit.
Prep for weeks.
Fly for minutes.
Search for , well in this case only 30 minutes..LOL
Analyze data for weeks!

Apogee was over 2 miles upwind of pad and landing was 3.7 miles from pad, straight down the road!!! But "Oh boy" what a long, strange drift, through all the upper wind levels, & directions it took 49 mph at 30,000 for starters.

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What is extremely unusual is the long horizontal "bop" it did at the top.... over 11 seconds of travel losing only 80-110 ft of altitude. Still sorting that out, along with main popping at top with only .7 gram BP.
More later.

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I still have 2 more altimeters to download and other 2 GPS's..all buried in my truck for now.
 
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mmmmm.jpg Screen Shot 2016-09-12 at 8.08.40 PM.jpg Screen Shot 2016-09-14 at 2.45.11 AM.jpg More data for those "analyzers ".
Note the "ticks" in the graph enlarged. It show pressure-altitude-speed.
First tick at 2.1 second is entry into ****** 1030ft/p/sec then just before motor burn out....5 seconds..its going through M-2.
About 11 seconds later [13 on graph] into coast , coming back out of Mach show last tick.. Those ticks show both in pressure and altitude as shock waves screw with data readings & cause the spikes in otherwise smooth line.

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I've seen similar jogs on every flight I've had with my TeleMetrum V2. The GPS loses lock under loads over 4G or so. It then takes a few seconds for it to reestablish lock.

Here's a good example:
Saab Earth.jpg

I'm pretty sure that that rocket didn't do two 90 degree turns at 8000'. :wink:

Tilt angle shows it was off vertical by 20 degrees due to winds, lost quite a bit of altitude to that.

Apogee was over 2 miles upwind of pad and landing was 3.7 miles from pad, straight down the road!!! But "Oh boy" what a long, strange drift, through all the upper wind levels, & directions it took 49 mph at 30,000 for starters.

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What is extremely unusual is the long horizontal "bop" it did at the top.... over 11 seconds of travel losing only 80-110 ft of altitude. Still sorting that out, along with main popping at top with only .7 gram BP.
More later.

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DE6B20949E1D47BDA8D541E00C0EC658.jpg What RFU looked like at the start.

I also used Bill Cooks "Mayhem" fly away rail guides. 75mm size.
Work equally well on both 3 & 4 fin rockets.
Really like that name, brings back many memories....LOL:smile:

DE6B20949E1D47BDA8D541E00C0EC658.jpg

Sure made flying this much simpler. No tower to set up. No damage to fins. They came off clean right after clearing the rail. He has modified the hinges. You no longer use those HUGE bands. Now smaller bands go around "each end" only, but maintain the same/or better amount of opening force.

I added some beads of "RTV" [bathtub caulk] to act as grippers. Worked exceptionally well. My guides were used 4 times and all were pleased, to have tried them.
 
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What an absolutely incredible flight Jim...
There were so many unbelievable flights to make the long journey worthwhile,,,
this one tops that list...
M 2.1 for 10 seconds !!!!
Jim, that is such an achievement...
I sure am glad recovery was no problem...
Good for you man...
I can't wait to read about the rest of the details of the flight as you learn them...
Really cool Jim...

Teddy
 
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