Wow Eric - thank you very much for the write up, pictures and the nice comments, i am truly honored man!
Thanks Tim and Ryan
So here is the flight report from this weekend - and thank you to everyone on here who has been watching, reading, encouraging, critiquing really appreciate it, the encouragement in the rocket community is really a special thing. Many people ask me about rocketry and I say "I have had SO many hobbies in my short life and the rocket community is the only one that Ive been a part of that everyone else wants you to win too...excluding drag races of course
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you know i'm going to thank everyone too and I have so many people to think which are also in the following video but lets get to the flight report.
FLIGHT REPORT:
This isn't Black Rock so thunderous and low for me - $450 in propellant I want to see the entire flight, at least a smoke trail.
Midwest Power 2016 Princeton IL QCRS - weather Saturday was perfect 6-7 mph winds and sunny clear skies - thank God!
I prepped as much as possible so Saturday morning - I was going to be ready to head to the RSO table as soon as my dad arrived from his 5 hour drive.
Passed RSO - and the Pad crew was Gus, Eric, my Dad, My wife and my sons Andrew and Anthony. Justin Ferrand was kind enough to film it which the video below is just from my I phone and pad camera so will fall far short of Justin's.
LCO's were Eric Czteacherman and ? - he was funny - thanks for the great call.
6" QCC was just over 12' tall - we put on the 1515 rail and was off vertical just a couple degrees.
Final Weight: 72 lbs
Motor: AT 98 / 10240 - M1939 White Thunder
Total Ns: 10482 - 2% N
Burn time: 6.2 sec
Drogue Chute - 24" Mach 2 Rocketman
Main Chute - Approx 16' Rocketman
Altimeter Primary - RRC3 set to apogee and 700' main
Altimeter backup - SLCF set to apo +1 and 600' main
charges: 7 gram primary 8 gram backup for both drogue and main
Altitude: 6970' primary 7033' backup
max speed: 452 mph primary 456 mph backup
descent rate under drogue: 73 ft/sec
descent rate under main: 47 ft/sec hmm - going to have to do something different here but soft field and no damage
ejection charges - apogee and main came out on primary charges - all charges popped
damages: only known damage was the AT 98/10240 case blistered about 1/2 dollar size and was difficult to get the motor out.
Funny I was completely calm, just excited leading up to the flight and even through the count down - it wasn't until the coast phase that for about 20 seconds i was so nervous my hands were shaking.....
EVENT.....EVENT ....WHERE IS THE EVENT...... BOOMM BOOOM ahhh SWEET! IT WORKED!! Falling we were able to see the flickers shining off the rocket (that day spent polishing paid off!). 2000....1000... my wife said
WHERE IS THE CHUTE??....
its ok baby it will come out - there is 7 grams of BP in there and I dropped that altimeter to 700' BOOOMM there it is! WOOOHOOO!! When the chute came out I didn't care if it drifted into the corn or not, I passed and I get the rocket back was all I cared about. whew what a relief!!
Ignition was quick and thundered off the pad with a slight variation south of vertical take off - and that motor burned a long time. When the motor burned out, the bird was high enough where we could not hear to confirm whether the whistle affect in the air intakes worked or not. Smoke intakes were not used for this flight.
[youtube]Sf4zyRzIwVc[/youtube]
Special Huge thank you to those who were a big part of this.
Gus Piepenburg - the legend around the Hoosier state of the big stuff he has accomplished, has tamed the rocket killer N-10,000 - huge 2-stager Vmaxes and he was there answering my phone calls, assisting, advising, etc... A real honor to have Gus as a friend and fellow gear head. Your awesome Gus, thank you thank you!..ok, enough of the bro-mance.
Eric Cayemberg - Eric it was great to meet you in person and thank you so much for your help, your excitement for this project, taking time away from your flying to shoot the great pictures and be there through this process. Thanks for the help on the Pad and your enthusiasm.
Justin Ferrand - L3 rocketeer / craftsman, the midwest premier cameraman who spends his weekend filming, then weeks after cropping, formatting, pruning through hours of files so we have a great video of our flights. Thanks Justin, really thank you very much and for your advice through this project as well.
Mike Crupe of MAC Performance - for his blessing, advice etc. thanks Mike
Nat Kinsey at Upscale CNC - a big part of helping to create the structure
Bob Jablonski of Countyline hobbies - Has help with all 3 of my Certification motors and both my L1 & L2 rockets
Chris Hebb in Greencastle, IN - founder of Castlemakers Makerspace with the design of the exit nozzle
Tim Lehr at Wildman Rocketry - the rocket started as an Ultimate wildman with custom payload and custom fin slots cut by Tim
Jason Griffin - for taking the time to talk with me on the ejection system - made testing a breeze
My Wife - she was really encouraging throughout this project
My kids Andrew and Anthony - a big part of this on launch day, from Pad and pad camera crew to the recovery crew. And to think, this rocket stuff all started by a book I had, I think it was "365 things you can do with your boys" it was on the list of fun things to do and look what that turned into.
JJSR - again thanks for the idea of upscaling a QCC. Likely I would not have thought of this until my son laid eyes your awesome scratch upscale of a QCC at LDRS in New York
Jim (K-tesh) - for being nice to make the OR file that i could modify from something reliable.
Teddy @ One Bad Hawk Harness - advice on sizing and some great harnesses!
Ky Michaelson from Rocketman Chutes - for exchanging the drogue and stepping up when time was getting short
Mark from Stickershock23 - great graphics and getting them sized right!
likely I will only fly this once a year.
Next flight Date and venue - unknown- need an open area for this monster
next motor - M1939 is a great motor for this so either that again or a N2000 White Thunder
next altimeter settings - 900' - 800'
next project?: I'll probably do the L3 shuffle - which means i'll take a little break from building?...naaa - a 4" Darkstar that I bought off Adrian (you had me at split fin) and likely a 2-stage of some sort - 54mm or 3" maybe - i would like to try a 2-stage split fin
