Battlepark April 4. 5 and 6th Battle of the Rockets

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I was there today. There were lots of cert flights as many of the college students brought personal rockets to cert with. Some did well, some not so well.

I only had three flights. The Estes Leviathan on a G64W that got to 1328ft, a Estes Renegade D on a F24W that got to 1213 ft, and Dog Whistler on a J420R that hit 4144 ft. Good thing I put the Walston tracker in the Dog Whistler. It landed a mile away. About 100ft from Ceder Mountain Dr. (VA 649) and 150 ft from US-15. According to the topo map, it was about 5100 ft from the launch site. It would seem like the main deployed at apogee, but that has never happened before and no one saw anything. You would expect to be able to see the main if it deployed.

Anyway, the Battle is on for tomorrow. Where good boots. If we get thunder storms tonight, it could be muddy early tomorrow.

Actually looks like Sunday might be the best day to fly.

Are you going to bring the boost glider out?
 
Instead of repairing the SST and converting it to RC (the airframe is pretty burnt out on the tail cone making pod ejection sticky) I built an Aerotech Phoenix (very sexy) and finished an earlier project ...an Estes Astro Blaster. I'm converting an Aerotech Mantis Pad as we speak to handle the Phoenix launch.....trying to wrap that up.
Futaba radio gear installed on both...but can't find a battery small enough to fit in the Astro Blaster....very tight fit and todays small li-pos don't match my old radio gear....they all seem to be over 4v. The Phoenix has more room up front for gear.



The Phoenix is set up - rudder/elevator/aileron but needs some tosses and trimming before it goes up under rocket power...(I've read it launches fairly aggressively so I'd like to get it trimmed first but a windy day will make that difficult).

I'll be bringing both....need to weigh the upscale Astrobee 1500 and size a chute for it when fully loaded with outboards.

Wow......you had a another far off recovery.The winds up today as well as the apogee deploy?
 
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Beautiful day...very few clouds and very light winds, unlimited ceiling so nice day for high altitude.

Should have brought my two stagers.
 
Jim!

Sorry I missed you yesterday - I flew on Friday and worked BOTR on Saturday. Yesterday was dual birthdays (wife and daughter), so I spent the day with them.

Cheers!
 
Sunday was the best day for flying I think I've ever seen. There were NO winds aloft!!! The only winds were below 500ft and they were only 2 - 3 mph.

Jim, the Dog Whistler on Friday ended up 5,100 ft from the pads as close as I could measure it on the topo map. I think the main might have deployed at apogee, but that was the 10th flight and it never did that before and none of the charges or anything was different this time. There was enough haze that no one saw the chute. Everyone heard the apogee event, but the rocket was never seen in the air again.

I did have my first confirmed apogee deployment of the main on Grapeshot on Sunday. I flew it with a K550W. It hit 6402 ft and the main deployed. It must have just barely come out because the forward cord was tangled with the drogue. It took over 5 minutes to come down. At 500 ft it started moving north toward US-15 and landed 300 yds from the pad, about 100 yards past that small group of trees. Now I'm wishing I had gotten another Pro54 L935 and flown that! What a day to fly them HIGH!

I also flew the Estes Leviathan on a H128W and it should have hit about 2,500 ft. I was standing at the LCO table, 200 ft from the pad, and it landed 4 steps away from me. You just can't get any better then that! :)

Jim, the boost glider was really cool. Hope the second landing didn't mess it up. It looked a little harder then the first one.
 
gwolski said:
Jim!

Sorry I missed you yesterday - I flew on Friday and worked BOTR on Saturday. Yesterday was dual birthdays (wife and daughter), so I spent the day with them.

Cheers!
Click to expand...

Gene:
sorry I didn't make it out Saturday...had only one shot at this one and Sunday wasn't bad.
PM sent.
 
Handeman said:
Sunday was the best day for flying I think I've ever seen. There were NO winds aloft!!! The only winds were below 500ft and they were only 2 - 3 mph.

Jim, the Dog Whistler on Friday ended up 5,100 ft from the pads as close as I could measure it on the topo map. I think the main might have deployed at apogee, but that was the 10th flight and it never did that before and none of the charges or anything was different this time. There was enough haze that no one saw the chute. Everyone heard the apogee event, but the rocket was never seen in the air again.

I did have my first confirmed apogee deployment of the main on Grapeshot on Sunday. I flew it with a K550W. It hit 6402 ft and the main deployed. It must have just barely come out because the forward cord was tangled with the drogue. It took over 5 minutes to come down. At 500 ft it started moving north toward US-15 and landed 300 yds from the pad, about 100 yards past that small group of trees. Now I'm wishing I had gotten another Pro54 L935 and flown that! What a day to fly them HIGH!

I also flew the Estes Leviathan on a H128W and it should have hit about 2,500 ft. I was standing at the LCO table, 200 ft from the pad, and it landed 4 steps away from me. You just can't get any better then that! :)

Jim, the boost glider was really cool. Hope the second landing didn't mess it up. It looked a little harder then the first one.
Click to expand...

The K550 W was very cool.
What's your personal best altitude?

Yeah, the AT Phoenix was fun.
It wasn't as hard to keep it on track on the launch as I feared it might be...(that second launch did surprise me though -Someone said a dust devil got me on the way up).

It did survive the second landing....no thanks to me - I milked it too far coming home and it corn-stalked.
Vertical stab popped off when it ground looped, but it will be an easy fix....I'll put in some reinforcement at the root.

I need to take some "throw" out of the ailerons, and put more throw in the elevator...I could not get it to loop even with full elevator applied, and I didn't want to try to get a full loop by putting it into a fast dive.

It seems it looses altitude quickly in an aileron turn, and as set up right now the elevator hasn't enough authority to keep it level by holding up elevator while in a turn....of course I haven't flown RC in years, so I'm not quite trimmed out in my head either.

I didn't try rudder only turns yet, as I didn't think there was enough dihedral in the wings to turn it with rudder only.
Right stick on transmitter is aileron, left stick is set up for rudder (forgot which mode that is referred to).

Both flights were on F13's.... a G will double the burn time and altitude, so I can fool around a bit more.

Next time I'll hand you the transmitter if you want some stick time.
 
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MaxQ said:
The K550 W was very cool.
What's your personal best altitude?
Click to expand...

It was very cool. I'll have to fly that more often. I've had a couple of flights higher then the 6,402 ft. that got. My cert flight on a K695R was 6,824 and I flew a Pro54 6GL L935 to 9559 ft @ Mach 1.2 The K flight only got 565 mph.

I'll look forward to the G flight on the glider!
 

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