Poll: recovery success rate

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What is your recovery loss rate?

  • 34% or worse

  • 11-33%

  • 6-10%

  • 0-5%


Results are only viewable after voting.

EXPjawa

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After thinking about it this morning, I'm curious as to what the typical success rate is for recovering a rocket intact. I'm not talking about minor damage that can is readily repaired, but rather either having the rocket wrecked on landing or was unrecoverable. For me, since I got back into the hobby a year and half ago, according to my records, I've made 128 flights. Out of that, I've "lost" 5 rockets. Three wrecked on landing - mainly tube damage from a hard impact. One disappeared in a carrot field, even though I had a good line on where it was going. And the other remains in the very top of a high tree cluster near our club launch site parking area. That's about 4% loss rate. What are other people seeing?
 
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I had a very bad run with my Aerotech fleet back in 2012- every one that relied on mid-body separation failed to separate one day, and I lost 4 (G-Force, Arreaux, Barracuda and Mirage). I was able to rebuild the Barracuda and G-Force, and made those nose-eject. Have been flying fine since.
 
Oh, I didn't read the post before answering... I answered including minor damage and estimating around 10%. If you are wanting actual loss rate (destruction, loss, unrecoverable), then it has to be in the 1% to 2% range.
 
I'm probably right at five percent. My most painful was my first attempt at L2. Failed to cert that day, and destroyed the scale rocket I was most proud of.
 
Hmmm....I haven't lost a rocket or treed one in 30+ years. Most of my carnage usually happens all at once. Chute failure, no stage separation, scuffs and bangs usually. Most of which is repairable. That staged rocket failure was a scratch built Der Red Max I made with BT 70 tubes and a hand turned nose cone. Should have seen it. The second stage lit while the first was hanging on....till it crashed. That one was a total loss. I did salvage the nose cone though. As far as truly loosing one to drifting away or getting lost in the fields / forest....that was a really really long time ago.
 
Kind of an obtuse poll. I could launch all day on an A8-3 and never lose a rocket. But one goof on a Mach 1, 10,000' flight and it's all over. Also, I will spend hours looking for a lost HPR rocket, but on a $5 - $5 LPR rocket, it usually isn't worth my time.
 
Obtuse is kind of harsh. I just wondered - on average - how often are rockets written off. There's a lot of launching that takes place in between your two fairly extreme poles, and across that range the question is relevant. Its just a statistic, you know what they say about statistics... :rolleyes:
 
I find more joy in getting my rocket back to fly again another day versus going big and losing it. So, my motor choices are often on the conservative side but that has only left me with two losses in the last year - a B6-2 with no ejection charge fired (lawn dart, Estes replaced motor and rocket), and a parachute that didn't leave the body tube (lawn dart). I deserved to lose at least a few in the last year but got lucky and got them back.
 
Obtuse is kind of harsh. I just wondered - on average - how often are rockets written off. There's a lot of launching that takes place in between your two fairly extreme poles, and across that range the question is relevant. Its just a statistic, you know what they say about statistics... :rolleyes:

Sorry. Maybe that was the wrong word choice. Broad? No insult intended or desired.
 
Well, if I count the low power rockets that I've launched purposefully on motors that were too big for a small field, knowing that I'd probably lose them to the trees, my loss rate is probably around 6% to 8% since I returned to the hobby in 2010. Removing those, it's probably closer to 5%. If I remove lower power and just calculate using my mid & high power rockets, the rate drops to around 3%.

The most recent major loss was also an embarrassing one. I managed to lose a LOC Minnie Magg...flying only on a baby 'I' motor...in Argonia. :facepalm:
 
Well, if I count the low power rockets that I've launched purposefully on motors that were too big for a small field, knowing that I'd probably lose them to the trees, my loss rate is probably around 6% to 8% since I returned to the hobby in 2010. Removing those, it's probably closer to 5%. If I remove lower power and just calculate using my mid & high power rockets, the rate drops to around 3%.

The most recent major loss was also an embarrassing one. I managed to lose a LOC Minnie Magg...flying only on a baby 'I' motor...in Argonia. :facepalm:

Three weeks ago, I launched my G-Force on a G76 to about 950 feet, watched it land about 500 feet away. I walked straight to it, or rather, where it was. Unbeknownst to me, it had chute-dragged across the field into a ditch. Someone else found it later, floating in the creek!

The funny thing was -- I chose that rocket for a windy day, thinking to myself, "A four-inch rocket to under 1000 feet ... no way I can lose this one!" :facepalm:
 
I've never to date in my 90 or so total flights lost a rocket. I've had 1 CATO and 2 treed landings (both of which were eventually recovered, though not before enduring some rain storms - 1 lived to fly again). The rocket that CATO'd was repaired though I have yet to fly it again.
 
Kind of an obtuse poll. I could launch all day on an A8-3 and never lose a rocket. But one goof on a Mach 1, 10,000' flight and it's all over. Also, I will spend hours looking for a lost HPR rocket, but on a $5 - $5 LPR rocket, it usually isn't worth my time.

I agree with Bat-mite on this one. If you do 3 fins and a nose cone in LPR all day, you can have a near 100 percent success rate. If you try new things or HPR, the success rate can drop rapidly.
 
Your success rate is going to go down exponentially with how complex the rocket is. That's what makes it rocket science... you have to learn to anticipate the failure modes and plan for them. With a little Estes LPR ARF, the only real failure mode is the shock cord breaking or coming loose. With a 2-stage K-to-J... lots of things to go wrong. That's why guys spend a whole year (or more) planning their LDRS flight, and there's still lots of failures. The thing with "failures" is that they're only a failure if you don't learn anything from them...
 
Your success rate is going to go down exponentially with how complex the rocket is. That's what makes it rocket science... you have to learn to anticipate the failure modes and plan for them. With a little Estes LPR ARF, the only real failure mode is the shock cord breaking or coming loose. With a 2-stage K-to-J... lots of things to go wrong. That's why guys spend a whole year (or more) planning their LDRS flight, and there's still lots of failures. The thing with "failures" is that they're only a failure if you don't learn anything from them...

Agreed and the challenge factor is part of the fun-factor.
 
I rarely lose a rocket. It may take a couple months, but they usually come back.
 
Last year I was experimenting with smokeless powder for a while. In spite of VERY careful and consistent packing of the charges and MULTIPLE ground tests, I had 3 lawn darts out of 5 flights. Two J and one L flight. destroyed. very depressing.
I'm back to black powder.
 
Very interesting poll!
I've only "lost" one rocket (It hurt though-ballistic recovery on a 3" FG rocket from 2600' into the desert-It's probably still buried somewhere) if you mean being unable to find a rocket on recovery. I've had two other really close calls-a 5.5" Mini Magg in a cornfield (found by another flyer) and a LOC Vulcanite (also found by another flyer).

If you count flights that involved damaging the rocket (hard landings, deployment failures, etc), I looked at my logs and had 8 failures out of 105 flights last year, and so far 2 failures out of 28 flights this year, so both about 7-8% failure rates.
 
Since becoming a BAR around March 2014, I have made 60 rocket launches. Not much by TRF standards. Out of those 60 launches, I lost a Viking on a second stage booster with a parachute in Lucerne, never recovered. My Quest Skydive was packed with a few rubber green aliens with parachutes causing complications during ejection. Nose cone never popped off and the rocket darted into dry lake accordianating it. SCORE: 2 losses out of 60 flights.
 
In the last six years I've had two full on recovery failures. My SNXL failed to deploy its chute (too tight of a fit) and accordioned on impact. My BAR Crayon Rocket fell from about 2k' in a flat spin as I had neglected to attach the chute to the recovery train...d'oh! No damage to the crayon rocket which is basically my "beater" bird.
 
I wasn't thinking properly and selected the wrong button.

My records show I have "lost" 29 rockets over 375 flights, so a little less than 8 percent
What I didn't take into account was 7 got ruined during flooding, so they shouldn't be counted and 11 were donated. And I actually did repair one from my list so I actually lost 10 so my loss rate is really less than 3%. And some of those were for demo flights where the launch field was "less than optimal" (small) causing several of the 10 to be treed.
 
When I first started in LPR, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I bought the rocket, built it to spec, and launched it on the recommended motors. I thought I had to use the chute that came with it; I didn't know that I could downgrade to a smaller chute, or cut a spill hole, or use a streamer.

I had no idea how high the rocket would go, or what its descent rate would be, or how far it would drift. I didn't know about simulation software, online calculators, or even these forums. I didn't even know about stability or weathercocking.

In those days, at a local sports field, I put many rockets into the trees and on people's roofs. Usually I was either unable to find them or unable to recover them.

I "accidentally" discovered an Estes Leviathan on clearance in a hobby shop. I snatched it up, spent days working on it, ordered some decals from Sticker Shock, bought an Estes G80-7T, and took it to the largest field I knew. On its first flight, the chute was bound coming out, and it descended quickly. But fortunately it landed in a big thicket of bushes about 200' from me.

My family and I went over there and searched and searched. But the briars were so thick that we never found it. I went back twice to look, all dressed up in multiple layers in the middle of summer just so I could tolerate the thorns, but no luck.

I think it was right around then that I discovered a local club, TRF, HPR, and all the tools necessary to start thinking about this as rocket science instead of a neighborhood pastime.
 
Since I joined this site, whenever that was, I have only lost one rocket to a tree, a crossfire ISX on a C6-5 to a tree, but I recovered it eventually, and salvaged the fins, motor hook and nose cone, which were rebuilt into flying models, so I guess I have a zero failure record this go around.:)
I damaged my TLP TAN-SAM once due to a pair of D12-5s which is too long of a delay, but I repaired it and it flies fine.
I don't fly as often as most folks, being more of a builder than a flyer, so I've only done maybe 100 flights in the past couple years, E20 and below in impulse.
 
As a BAR I've only done HPR flights (first flight was my successful L1 cert), and I just successfully L2'ed earlier this month, so only H, I and J motors for me, and no flight under ~2000' or with a less than 38mm rocket/MMT. Mix of DD and motor eject also. I've built/flown 5 rockets so far. I'll consider "success" as the rocket was completely undamaged/immediately flyable, and "failure" as significant damage requiring additional parts to repair (or totally destroyed), leaving a grey-area in-between of partial damage that was easy to repair, like replacing a cracked fin fillet or cutting a small section of zippered airframe without having to replace it. By this definition, of 30 flights total, 21 were successful (70%) and 5 were failures (17%). Here's the breakdown by rocket:

1) GLR T-bolt (38mm MD, SD). 2 flights (H148R and I280DM), 50% success/failure rate. First flight was successful (had electronics issues but that only meant no flight log as deployment was by motor), second flight the chute never deployed (I believe it was due to only using half of the supplied BP in the I280DM, which was following the motor's instructions for the airframe size). So that rocket was destroyed on impact (hence the R.I.P. in my signature, take your pick between the standard abbreviation or Rocket In Pieces).

2) GLR Firestorm 54 (54mm MD, initially with DD). 15 flights (all I motors), 67% success rate, 20% failure rate (two flights had minor damage easily repaired). This has been my 'workhorse rocket', but has been through a lot along the way.

The first flight was an I215R, had an early pressure separation that led to a 1.5" zipper. So not a "success" but not a "failure" either by the above definition, rocket flew again the same day (just a bit shorter). The second flight was more catastrophic, I65W-P, first time doing DD. Drogue squib never fired (e-match went from continuity to open but never lit the pyrogen), main came out at 700' but at the speed the rocket was going zippered the lower airframe down to the supermount, and split an electronics bay bulkhead, separating the upper and lower parts of the rocket. I cut the airframe just below the supermount, installed an Aero Pack M54E (drilling my own bypass holes in it to still do motor eject) to be the new shock cord anchor, and turned the original upper airframe into the new lower airframe section above the M54E, epoxying that tube in place (using the original e-bay coupler as the tube coupler). So the rocket was converted from DD to SD as it now only separated at the nosecone and only had room for a single chute.

In this configuration (what I referred to as "mk III") it flew 10 successful flights (all motor eject) with no damage. The 11th flight (13th overall) was an I245G-L, the motor eject was several seconds later than it should have been and it resulted in a 2.5" zipper. Once again the damaged section was removed and ready to fly again. The first flight in the "mk IV" configuration was an I357T (RMS-EZ before AT started shipping with RDK parts), the pre-assembled delay assembly blew the charge 8s early and zippered the airframe all the way to the M54E. In addition at landing the Slimline threaded retainer landed on a rock and crimped itself, I had to hack-saw the retainer at its middle to get my aft closure out.

For "mk V", since the M54E anchor had the down-facing stud I gave up on bottom retention and just used the M54E and a threaded rod as the motor retainer, and once again replaced the airframe above the M54E. Since I was ordering a new tube from GLR I ordered enough (and the e-bay parts) to go back to DD. The first flight in this configuration (I225FJ, electronic eject only) I was doing an in-air test of my first flight with shear pins, so I stuffed a 36" main in both bays so that it would still land safely even if the second charge failed to shear the pins. Well the second charge wasn't the problem, the apogee charge blew but failed to pull the larger chute out of the tube. So this flight was much like the second one, first chute came out at 700' and zippered the lower airframe down to the M54E once again. :facepalm: No damage to the e-bay or upper airframe this time as I took a different approach to the e-bay construction that places no stress on the bulkheads (two eye-bolts connected through a central coupler, so no load transfer via the bulkheads like with GLR's design). This is currently awaiting repair, I'm going to see if I can still get any 54mm Magnaframe to re-build this one more time for DD, now that I know the shear pins work it shouldn't have any trouble pulling the much smaller drogue out of the lower bay. If there is no more 54mm Magnaframe then I may just go SD with a Chute Release, provided I can get it to fit along with the larger chute.

3) Binder Excel (4" DD w/54mm MMT). 3 flights (I280DM, I297SK and J350W, all SD w/motor-eject only), 67% success, 33% failure rate. First two flights were successful, third flight the motor ejection charge never fired, rocket was destroyed on impact. I had electronics on-board but no functioning e-matches, so flight data was captured even in the crashed flight.

4) RW Go Devil 38 (38mm MD, DD). 5 flights (2x H148R, I285R, H123W, I366R, electronic-eject only), 80% success rate, 0% failure rate. The only flight that caused any damage was the second one, the chutes tangled and it landed hard, cracked a fin fillet. The first flight had a pressure separation that popped the chutes early, but no damage to the fiberglass airframe. I've also had the main come out early a few times, will be shear-pinning the nose starting with my next flight.

5) Binder Excel (4" DD w/54mm MMT). 5 flights (I280DM, J360SK, J145SK-LB, I216CL, J315R, all DD with no motor-eject except for the J145SK which was SD electronic eject), 80% success, 0% failure rate. This was a rebuild of #3 (only a few internal parts re-used as all of the airframe above the fin-can was destroyed and trying to salvage the fin-can didn't seem worth it to me). Only the J145SK flight resulted in any damage, a landing with no chutes resulted in 3 fin fillets cracked, a tear in the airframe and a bit of crumpling at one end of the avionics bay (coupler). It was repaired without replacing any parts. 3 of the flights had difficulty getting the main parachute out, but 2 of those had no damage, one because the drogue-only landing was soft enough and the other because the nosecone managed to yank the chute out in just enough time before it hit the ground. For the last flight I flipped the upper airframe configuration to be a "chute cannon" instead of a "chute puller" and finally got my successful L2 cert flight.
 
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