> If you aren't going for maximum speed, and you aren't going for maximum altitude, then why are you concerned that it must be lightweight and minimum diameter?
Practice. I want to run maximum altitude minimum diameter multistage rockets in future, but the L1 test won't allow me to multistage, eg. won't allow me to run 2*G motors instead of 1*H.
> If you plan on using a minimum diameter rocket, you are going to have a near maximum altitude flight at near maximum speed. Any small 29 mm minimum diameter rocket is likely to go 6000+' on an H! You can't see a 29 mm rocket at 6,000', and if the winds were at the high power limit of 20 mph, the rocket will drift 2' sideways for every foot of apogee so a rocket going to 6,000' could drift more than 2 miles from the launch pad! Good luck finding it with a tracker. A 2 pound 29 mm minimum diameter on an H will apogee from 2,400' to over 5,500' depending on the motor.
I had planned on using a very low thrust H, an H54, to keep the altitude down, as well as the inevitable excruciatingly bad drag coefficient of this first high power attempt. But when I got to the launch site the winds were near the high power limit and I had a very large parachute - so I would have had a lot of trouble finding it (especially as this one had no tracker). Pre-launch altitude calculation 4,000'. I ended up not launching it and instead using it for a static test, parachute didn't deploy. So next step is to make another, hopefully better, for L1 certification.
> If you cannot answer the questions you asked, are you truely prepared for L1 certification?
As ready as anyone. So far I've fired off one each (not counting complete failures) of C, D, E, F and G. Next step is H. I have a PhD in engineering, but it's Civil Engineering not mechanical.
BIG QUESTION: The Cesaroni H54-10 motor took a full 6 seconds to start thrusting at maximum after the igniter finished firing. Any idea what caused the delay and is there anything I can do to to reduce that delay - I'm thinking it could have a deadly influence on timing of mutistaging.