This weekend the 300# Kevlar on my Go Devil 29 failed on an otherwise gorgeous F59W flight....so I took a sweet core sample of Jean Dry Lake. The avbay, which lived in the body tube, got squished to almost nothing. So, the Quark, Eggfinder Mini, magnetic switch & battery were all reduced to near dust. The rocket itself is still in perfect shape though.
So what went wrong? My Go Devil 38 core-sampled 2 Saturday's ago, my SLCF's drogue charge never fired, but the main charge fired around 700' as expected. Main shredded, my NC broke free at the bulkhead, also split my 3D-printed sled for my Eggfinder/battery in the nose. Rest of the rocket remained intact and core-sampled ~2' into soft-ish dirt. Was able to pull the rocket and upper airframe out without any tools (thankfully, as any tools I had were almost a mile walk away over hilly/grassy terrain). Amazingly, all of the electronics survived, including the EF which tumbled free from the NC to the ground, was still transmitting or I'd have never found it, the SLCF/MagSwitch/battery in the avbay and an AltimeterThree clipped to the MD motor retention rod. Never found the NC itself, and the top of the upper airframe broke, either 'zippered' by the shock cord or on impact with the ground. So I'll be ordering a new NC today, already had an extra airframe piece for the GD38 since I was considering lengthening it when I first built it (think I'll keep the original length when I re-build, the main is a tight fit but it fits), but I epoxy the avbay coupler into the airframe to have a chute cannon, so I need a new coupler piece also.
Neglected to take any pictures on the field, don't know what I was thinking. Also lost my fly-away rail guide once again, seems to have gone for a ride with the rocket, presumably why it arc'ed so much that made it land ~4000' away from the pad (I305FJ to ~6400').
Still have the unfired drogue charge to test, when I measured the MJG FireWire on the field it read 0Ω, my meter usually sees 1-1.5Ω for these, but both these charges read 0Ω so I thought maybe my meter's battery was getting weak and flew it anyway (on my work multimeter the first thing to go when the battery gets weak is accuracy on the resistance measurement). Bad idea.
It still measures 0Ω, so it didn't blow open, need to see if the SLCF is not damaged now if it really was a shorted match. Should switch to a smaller battery and see if I can squeeze two altimeters (SLCF and a Quark, probably) into the bay for redundancy on future flights.