[L3] Composite N5800 Flying Case, ~67kft MSL, M3.5

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Great flight...write up & detailed build .

I enjoyed it immensely & re-enforced some of my decisions on my project.

Thank you & party on!!!
Just one more thing......after this fight & reflecting on it. What would you change or modify, if anything?
[there's usually some tweek...LOl]
 
Great flight...write up & detailed build .

I enjoyed it immensely & re-enforced some of my decisions on my project.

Thank you & party on!!!
Just one more thing......after this fight & reflecting on it. What would you change or modify, if anything?
[there's usually some tweek...LOl]

I know it's still early, BUT was this a successful attempt?
 
Great flight...write up & detailed build .

I enjoyed it immensely & re-enforced some of my decisions on my project.

Thank you & party on!!!
Just one more thing......after this fight & reflecting on it. What would you change or modify, if anything?
[there's usually some tweek...LOl]

Thank you very much Jim.

Curious; what decisions did you re-enforce?

There is without a doubt a handful of things that I would change. I am going to make a post dedicated to just that very question - so stay tuned. I just want to post about the flight prior to that.
 
So in the rush of the moment I did not take much pictures prior to launch. It went like this - sand the fincan in a brunos hotel room, bond the fincan to the motor case, prep. the BP charges, assemble the rocket... all in one day. Might not sound like much but sanding the ablative off in a hotel room from scratch is a lot of work. The choice was launch a rocket or wait - didn't want to wait and didn't design this rocket to be optimized therefore I didn't care much. That's not to say that the fincan came out bad. It didn't; it came out pretty nice.

Anyways my mind was on getting the rocket in the air and not on taking any pictures. Sorry guys.

I do have video of the flight. I will post it as soon as I get it edited and uploaded. Thanks for the patience.


Checklist:

  • The FIRST successful MD (or subMD) ALL COMPOSITE N5800 flight.... CHECK
    [*]
    [*]TRA N Altitude Record.... CHECK
    [*]
    [*]Level 3 certification.... CHECK





A still from a video.



Lift off.



Everything seems to be in order.



All the recovery gear is good for another round.



What an amazing site to walk up to.



My little 'dangerous,' parachute.



Fincan post flight. Showing signs of a warrior.



Close up of the fincan. As you can see the leading edges do not look like they have bites taken out of them. Held up pretty well - even the ablative did. I'll take it.



Post flight reassemble shot.



~10lb rocket now - not so hard to trek with.



BALLS picturesque.



BRB data. 66,527 ft MSL.



TeleMega data. 63,852 ft AGL @ Mach 3.5. And thats the N record folks.



Lift off to splash down. If I remember correctly recovery was something like 3.7 miles from the launch site.
 
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Holy Smokes ! Very cool what an accomplishment!


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Wow! That's extremely impressive. I'll definitely have to take a closer look at this thread and the details later, and congratulations on the cert and successful flight.
 
Congratulations Matt, that's one heck of a flight! Well done sir.
 
Congratulations! Welcome to L3. Glad everything went to plan :)


So in the rush of the moment I did not take much pictures prior to launch.
Give someone a camera for the flight and their job is to just take pictures. Works a treat and removes one stress from you, and you still get to see the pictures!
 
Very nice result A5tr0 An0n :cool:

I just remembered CTI still have a competition for 70k on the N5800, so question is are you going to look at an optimised flight at some stage?
 
Congrats! Awesome build and flight.

Now that you've had some time to think about it and relive it a few hundred times, is there anything you'd do differently?
 
Great flight. I understand why you had to bring it down fast. That said, per the data posted I believe it hit the ground at 96’/second. Did the rocket/motor incur any damage or bend up the case? I assume no space for a larger chute or a chute release type of arrangement? I know folks bring these high altitude rockets back fast, but that seems really fast to me.


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Truly awesome project. Your craftsmanship (and design) were superb.

Two questions:

Did you have to do any above room temperature cure on the epoxies you used..particularly the "laminating" epoxy? Vacuum bagging equipment I have, but the mention of making a curing oven big enough for a rocket got the "step too far" look from the better half.

Are you willing to share your ablative recipe?
 
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Thank you to everybody who responded!



Wow! That's extremely impressive. I'll definitely have to take a closer look at this thread and the details later, and congratulations on the cert and successful flight.
Thanks. I remember following your thread years ago - I was rooting for you against all those anti-composite types.




Very nice result A5tr0 An0n :cool:

I just remembered CTI still have a competition for 70k on the N5800, so question is are you going to look at an optimised flight at some stage?
That competition expired in 2015 - but to answer your question, no. I am done with the N5800 lol. My interest lie beyond commercial motors and I only did it because my L3 was long overdue.




Great flight. I understand why you had to bring it down fast. That said, per the data posted I believe it hit the ground at 96’/second. Did the rocket/motor incur any damage or bend up the case? I assume no space for a larger chute or a chute release type of arrangement? I know folks bring these high altitude rockets back fast, but that seems really fast to me.
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The descent rate was 96ft/s - you're correct. There was no damage from splash down on any components of the vehicle. No bending of the case or anything. There was space for a larger parachute but I did not want to bring it down any slower than I did.




Absolutely amazing! Congrats! So, what are you going to do for your L4? :wink:
Probably a minimum diameter Estes lol.




Truly awesome project. Your craftsmanship (and design) were superb.

Two questions:

Did you have to do any above room temperature cure on the epoxies you used..particularly the "laminating" epoxy? Vacuum bagging equipment I have, but the mention of making a curing oven big enough for a rocket got the "step too far" look from the better half.

Are you willing to share your ablative recipe?
All of the epoxies that I used were room temp. cure. I made an 8ft oven and a 10foot oven. Trashed both of them... :/ I'll shoot you a PM at some point.
 
To everyone else interested in the post flight write up (things I would change etc.) - I will get to that soon. Thanks.
 
Thanks. I remember following your thread years ago - I was rooting for you against all those anti-composite types.

I was curious who remembered. I definitely still want to give it another try, and it's great to see someone succeed (and I'm still relatively convinced I had a coupler/tube failure up by the nose, not a fin failure). I'll definitely be studying this build closely before any future attempts!
 
I was curious who remembered. I definitely still want to give it another try, and it's great to see someone succeed (and I'm still relatively convinced I had a coupler/tube failure up by the nose, not a fin failure). I'll definitely be studying this build closely before any future attempts!

Yea, I remember; I was there. The question is whether your next attempt will be "fully optimized". :wink:
 
Well, what would be the point if it wasn't?

;)
 
Outstanding sir. Absolutely outstanding. Congratulations.

If'n yer gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.
 
All of the epoxies that I used were room temp. cure. I made an 8ft oven and a 10foot oven. Trashed both of them... :/ I'll shoot you a PM at some point.

Thanks very much for the details. Good to hear that these kind of results can be achieved without an oven. I look forward to the ablative recipe.

One more question, you said you didn't reach your target pressure for your vacuum bagging. What was your target and why? Can you go too low for something like this?
 
I was curious who remembered. I definitely still want to give it another try, and it's great to see someone succeed (and I'm still relatively convinced I had a coupler/tube failure up by the nose, not a fin failure). I'll definitely be studying this build closely before any future attempts!

I look forward to watching it! If you need any help or have any questions just shoot me a PM - I'd be more than happy to help!
 
Thanks very much for the details. Good to hear that these kind of results can be achieved without an oven. I look forward to the ablative recipe.

One more question, you said you didn't reach your target pressure for your vacuum bagging. What was your target and why? Can you go too low for something like this?

I typically target 27inHg when pulling on a t2t. I think, I ended up pulling 25inHg on this one because of old tape. I reuse my bags and tapes and can get anywhere from 5 to 8 uses out of them. Practically speaking, you cannot pull too much vacuum on the typical hobby setup and the typical hobby layup. The concern would be can the layup structure handle the exerted pressure that is being applied? I guess it also depends on how much 'excess,' resin you want to soak up.
 
Would you do anything differently? Sure.

If I were to reattempt this or start it over from scratch, there are a handful of things that I would do differently.

Here they are:

  • Use a thinner wall fincan tube. I used a 0.125" wall tube. I would of preferred using a 0.0625" wall tube.

  • In reality, I wouldn't even use a fincan tube on the next go around. I would tack the fins directly onto the motor case, fillet them, and then T2T directly over the case, and then apply the ablative on top. No need for the fincan. This removes the step and therefore the transition.

  • Would use a nosecone that has the same OD as the motor case; eliminating the step and therefore the transition.

  • Would use a FG coupler for the NC to Motor connection, as opposed to aluminum.

  • Would have optimized my boattail for the flight profile.

  • Would have painted the fins and nosecone lol.

  • Would have not rushed the build towards the end and double checked the tower angle - even though the flight was close to 90 degrees.

  • Would have remembered to take more picture preflight and put the video camera into the rocket :facepalm:

  • Change the fin design. Before I even finished building the fincan, I thought of a better way that I would of liked to go about doing this. I started playing around and testing the phenolic material and G11 material that I had. I torched them and then hit them with compressed air from a SCUBA bottle. I found that the G11 held up very well.

    Having the leading edges and fin core all as separate pieces, never really sat well with me. I remembered an idea that I came up with and posted here on the forum maybe in 2013 or so. So I was back to the think tank. I wanted the fin core and leading edges to be one in the same but didn't want any CF exposed (meaning being past the edge).

    Once I saw that the G11 held up so well, I thought it easier to just make the leading edges out of it and trash the phenolic all together. So the idea starts out with the G11 plate being as thick as the desired max width of the fin. Then I mill out the space where the CF buildup, T2T, and Ablative would go. Bevel the LE/TE and mill a radius into the edges where the removed material essentially is.



    The G11 Fin Core. One solid piece, instead of three.



    Different angled view. You can see the CF Buildup, T2T, and Ablative on the underside.



    Another viewing of the above picture.




Things you would of done the same? Sure.

If I were to reattempt this or start it over from scratch, there are a handful of things that I would do the same.

Here they are:

  • Would have used the same deployment method, that is single deploy.

  • Would have used the same parachute and the same descent rate. Maybe went to the 15" parachute even - depending on the descent rate.

  • Would have used the same 1" Kevlar harness strap.

  • Would have used the same electronics and payload configuration.

  • Would have used the same BP containment method.

  • Would have used the same epoxies, CF, FG, bevel method, and fin alignment method.

  • ETC.



I am sure that I am forgetting some things, but that is the vast majority of items.
 
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