OpenRocket - Horizontal Distance? And rocket files?

Hi,
I finally have OpenRocket up and running, and am finding it very interesting!
One thing I have not worked out, though, is how to get the horizontal distance traveled. For obvious reasons, this is even more important to me than peak altitude! It would obviously be influenced by wind, which is definitely modifiable in the simulations.
Also, I guess I imagined that all the common Estes (and other) kit rocket would be in there and selectable, but no. I did find .ork files for Big Bertha and a couple of others in a library at RocektReviews, but not many.
Thanks in advance for any advice, and thanks to those responsible for OpenRocket!

Run a simulation. Then click on the "Plot/Export" button. Select "Lateral Distance" as a Y-axis parameter. Then click on "Plot".

OpenRocket can also open Rocksim files (.rkt) - so try the Estes Rocksim designs from RocketReviews.

Cheers,
Doug

duckhead said:

Run a simulation. Then click on the "Plot/Export" button. Select "Lateral Distance" as a Y-axis parameter. Then click on "Plot".

OpenRocket can also open Rocksim files (.rkt) - so try the Estes Rocksim designs from RocketReviews.

Cheers,
Doug

Click to expand...

just what I was going to suggest. Open Rocket is a newer program, most stuff on RR will be rocsim files. Just open in open rocket, and you can save them as .ork files if you want.

Davidtmp said:

just what I was going to suggest. Open Rocket is a newer program, most stuff on RR will be rocsim files. Just open in open rocket, and you can save them as .ork files if you want.

Click to expand...

You probably will want to save as ork's because then you can take advantage of new features like appearance and flight configurations.

under plot/export (in the flight simulation window) you want 'flight side profile'.
Rex

Thanks for the tips, this is working much better for me. Now if I could only get my Mini Honest John to deploy its parachute - instead of the parabolic course it takes up and down, while still landing father away from the pad than it's peak altitude! I should maybe sand down the nose cone fitting.

I don't know how, or if, Open Rocket simulates a parachute recovery. I finally figured out what I was seeing was a non-chute landing. With my long thin design, it was showing it landing further away than the altitude even with no wind. Apparently it was falling sideways. Adding a certain amount of nose weight caused it to fall nose down, greatly reducing the distance, reversing the direction of walking, and increasing ground hit velocity. The craziest was .1-.2 oz. less, looked like a rollercoaster due to the expanded horizontal scale, first drifting, then diving.

To simulate a parachute recovery, you add a parachute, and tell it the deploy time (which you can tweak in the motors & configurations tab), whether that be apogee, the ejection charge for the motor, or a specific altitude.

It's interesting, though, to have a prediction of how it would fall, and even if that results in a big drift, it might keep the rocket from being destroyed. I'm guessing this is some kind of glider-like activity, the rocket falling sidewise but tilted.