NEFAR's Upscale Estes Gyroc

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Rick "Roket Rick" Boyette is the president of the club I launch with, FSA (Florida Spacemodeling Association). This is being launched at the next NEFAR launch as our site does not allow for launching something this large or with the impulse involved. There have been several flights on the smaller test vehicle at our field, and they were really spectacular. I can not wait to see this beast go off.
 
I saw this on Make. This thing is the size of a cruise missile, and they're going to try to helicopter recover it? Put a drill bit on the tip, 'cause it is definitely going to core sample! Just hope it misses all the cars, people, etc..
 
How many Reaper drones circle his house when he pulls that thing out of the garage?
 
Holy crap, that is either awesome or insane or equal parts both.

The article says it'll gyro down from 3000' then deploy a rear-ejected parachute at 750'. Viewing sequence:

3000 ft: "Here goes!"
2500 ft: "It's turning, check it out!"
2000 ft: "Damn that is impressive"
1500 ft: "There's gonna be a parachute, right?"
1000 ft: "I'll be in the bunker, let me know what happens".

Money quote from the end of the article:
"Maybe we can convince Rich and the team to share some of the launch footage after April 9th. “Only if it doesn’t embarrass me,” he says on Facebook. “It will be twelve seconds of pure terror on the way up,” he continues. “I can think of about six potential epic failure modes for this monstrous perversion of an Estes classic.”

Which for some reason reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers."
 
[video=youtube;frfqz-FSK9U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frfqz-FSK9U[/video]

-- Roger
 
[UPDATE - see message #22. It was supposed to eject a main chute before landing but didn't for some reason]

Mega-stupid to plan for a rocket THAT HEAVY to come down with a descent rate like that.

I mean, imagine a conventional rocket with rear ejection , weighing 100 pounds or whatever that mass was after ejection, that came down nose-first, on a chute.... but the chute was so small that the rocket "landed" at 50 mph vertical impact velocity, not because it was an accident that it hit that fast, but that it worked exactly as intended. [update - was not intended to do that, did have an accident with non-ejection of the main]

- George Gassaway
 
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Things I took from that video:

1) I think that was the slowest-mo takeoff footage I've ever seen. Very beautiful. Anyone know the equipment and frame rate used?

2) The air footage was also beautiful. This is a great use of drones. If someone had one in the air at my launches, I'd pay for some of that footage (assuming reasonable cost).

3) As cool as the concept was, that's clearly just too much mass to spin fast enough to actually slow the rocket's descent very much (or at all). Better in theory than reality, to say nothing of the scariness of having that massive thing come down pointy-end first.

4) I want to launch rockets on a farm like that. Wow!
 
1) I think that was the slowest-mo takeoff footage I've ever seen. Very beautiful. Anyone know the equipment and frame rate used?

I used a Casio EX-F1 recording 300 frames-per-second.

3) As cool as the concept was, that's clearly just too much mass to spin fast enough to actually slow the rocket's descent very much (or at all). Better in theory than reality, to say nothing of the scariness of having that massive thing come down pointy-end first.

It was falling slow enough that it would have been fine if the main parachute had deployed as intended. Rick hasn't determined, yet, why the 'chute didn't come out. A traditional rocket weighing that much and coming straight down would have been going a lot faster (and would have created a really big hole in the ground).

-- Roger
 
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It was falling slow enough that it would have been fine if the main parachute had deployed as intended. Rick hasn't determined, yet, why the 'chute didn't come out. A traditional rocket weighing that much and coming straight down would have been going a lot faster (and would have created a really big hole in the ground).

Maybe so. The drogue presumably slowed it down at least a little (?) as well. The descent had a very weird, slow-motion quality to it, reminded me of watching a large windmill turning slowly. It didn't really have as much of a "helicopter recovery" kind of feel to it as I was naively hoping for.

In any case, I applaud the incredible audacity of the build, even if I'm glad I was nowhere near it when it was coming down. :)
 
Maybe so. The drogue presumably slowed it down at least a little (?) as well.

There wasn't a drogue, per se. The motor mount ejected and returned under a separate parachute.

I didn't look that closely, but I assume the "ejection" of the motor mount is what allows the ailerons to flip up. It also makes the rocket a little lighter during descent.

-- Roger
 
Beautiful drone footage, Roger! How did you follow the rocket during descent, do you use FPV?
 
Beautiful drone footage, Roger! How did you follow the rocket during descent, do you use FPV?

I have a DJI Phantom 3 Professional. It transmits the image from the camera to a tablet mounted on the controller. It's still rather challenging most of the time to even find a rocket in the sky on the way down let alone track it. In this case, the rocket didn't go much higher than I was flying, so I was able to see it on the way down and track it by tilting the camera and turning the quadcopter. The video recorded is in 4K resolution, so I was able to do some zooming and cropping while editing the video since the final video is in HD resolution. I actually zoomed in a bit more than normal which made the rocket a bit blurry, but easier to follow.

-- Roger
 
Does anyone have a ground-view video? No slow-mo, no cuts, just watching the flight as the spectators did.
 
Does anyone have a ground-view video? No slow-mo, no cuts, just watching the flight as the spectators did.

I haven't seen one yet, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy Yawn captured the flight. He posts his videos on the nefar.net web site.

-- Roger
 
Onboard video from Paul Stohr of Leaping Lizards Rocketry:

[video=youtube;GIRsEXHwpSo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIRsEXHwpSo[/video]

-- Roger
 
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Would I be correct to assume that one of the K's spit a grain or had a cato? Still cool, too bad the main failed.

I think that's the igniter for the central M motor that shoots out. Not sure, though.

-- Roger
 
That wasn't the plan. The main 'chute failed to deploy.

-- Roger

Thanks for pointing that out.

It does make a huge difference that it was intended to deploy a main (I presume at some lower altitude, like a dual deploy after spinning down a lot of the way), but that for whatever reason it didn't eject out. As opposed to intending for it to spin all the way down.

So, it sucks that the main failed and it got so badly damaged as a result.

BTW - the original Gyroc by its nature is not a great performer. Wtih at lest half the fins fixed, evne if the flaps flpiied 90 degrees, that would be a net 45 degree pitch at the tips, so it is less of a helicopter-like autorotation descent and more like a higher-drag spinning rocket. I mean, at best the slowest it can do is fall about its own rotor span for every 360 degree rotation, whle by contrast copter models with blades at 5-10 degrees rotate several times during a descent equal to the rotor span. And the Gyroc is sorta small in "rotor" span too. A nice sport model for what it is, just that folks who have not seen the rogial fly, might expect it to descend a lot slower than it actually does, from seeing other copter recovery models that have less than 10 degree pitch angles.

And I do want to say great job with the airborne video. I think that's the best documentation I've seen for rocket flying, short of maybe some Science Channel/Discovery LDRS footage (shot by pros, though on older generation drones). Made me think of some of the footage the Flite Test guys get for R/C aircraft flying. We need more good footage like that. Also a lot of RSO's need to see that too, I know a few would have the initial reaction to "ban drones" altogether, for no specific local site limitation but just because they can. Same reason why I was glad to see some Multicopter pics from the National Sport Launch last year, and at NARAM last year by Chris Taylor, shows the NAR has no problem with it.

- George Gassaway
 
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It does make a huge difference that it was intended to deploy a main (I presume at some lower altitude, like a dual deploy after spinning down a lot of the way), but that for whatever reason it didn't eject out. As opposed to intending for it to spin all the way down.

So, it sucks that the main failed and it got so badly damaged as a result.

My quadcopter was flying at about 400' and the rocket only left the frame for a brief time. So, I think it only went up about 1000 feet. That wouldn't have allowed it to helicopter for very long before the parachute deployed. But, it probably would have been long enough (and low enough) to see.

The damage to the Gyroc looks bad, but repairable. At least it's in a few large pieces instead of many small ones. I'm hoping Rick and company can rebuild.

-- Roger
 
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BTW - the original Gyroc by its nature is not a great performer. Wtih at lest half the fins fixed, evne if the flaps flpiied 90 degrees, that would be a net 45 degree pitch at the tips, so it is less of a helicopter-like autorotation descent and more like a higher-drag spinning rocket. I mean, at best the slowest it can do is fall about its own rotor span for every 360 degree rotation, whle by contrast copter models with blades at 5-10 degrees rotate several times during a descent equal to the rotor span. And the Gyroc is sorta small in "rotor" span too. A nice sport model for what it is, just that folks who have not seen the original fly, might expect it to descend a lot slower than it actually does, from seeing other copter recovery models that have less than 10 degree pitch angles.

Thanks for pointing that out; I've never seen the original fly and made the exact assumption you describe.
 
BTW - the original Gyroc by its nature is not a great performer.

It just falls gracefully. :)

"Real" helicopter-recovery rockets often look like they are hovering and will never reach the ground.

And I do want to say great job with the airborne video.

Thanks! I really appreciate that.

-- Roger
 
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