Madcow Torrent for Jr. High Power Certification

Yes

RAHagen said:

The paint is finished! There are a few things I'm not happy about with how it turned out though... First I messed up putting on the "torrent" decal so it doesn't look as good as it could. second I used too coarse of a grit sand paper and had the foolish assumption that, "if I can't feel the scratches they won't show up in the paint". I was wrong. All minor problems that can't really be seen in pictures or from far away but it does take away from the look of the rocket once you get closer to it.

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I hear you on the scratches. If it shows in the primer it will show in the paint even more so. Not sure how bad they are but you could always wet sand them out and shoot some clear over it

pyrobob said:

+1 for the rail buttons. Anyone remember the rod whip on one rocket at the last launch???

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You mean the cruise missile?! Scared the crap out of me...150 ft up, 1500 ft out (those numbers should ideally be reversed), and right over the flight line. I bore a striking resemblance to my avatar during that flight, but with cursing instead of "meeps". Yes, to rail buttons! If it's over 3 lbs go with the extra stiffness and length of the rail.

AfterBurners said:

That can be set up for dual deploy correct?

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Yes. I'm not planning to do dual deploy for my cert. flight but I wanted to have my options open..

RAHagen said:

Yes. I'm not planning to do dual deploy for my cert. flight but I wanted to have my options open..

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Excellent choice in rocket. I remember watching the construction videos on Apogee's website. Very informative.

Yeah those videos were very helpful while I was building the rocket.

And here she is, all spiffied up and ready to go!

RAHagen said:

And here she is, all spiffied up and ready to go!

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Nice! When's the flight?

Excellent work


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Thanks!

rocketgeek101 said:

Nice! When's the flight?

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This Saturday. I'm getting excited!

We expect a full report of course.


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We're the way to the launch site now. I'll make sure to update the thread as soon as I can.

wfcook, yes of course. As full as I can be! 😊

Best of luck to you!


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Good Luck!

Successful flight, safe (ish) landing, junior Lv. 1 certification achieved! The rocket flew on the H195 like a champ! it did maintain a small amount of damage when it hit the ground but the damage is easily repairable so it didn't disqualify the rocket. I'll put up a more complete flight report with pictures, and videos tonight we we get home. Thanks for all the help from the people at DARS making sure my flight would be a success!

RAHagen said:

Successful flight, safe (ish) landing, junior Lv. 1 certification achieved! The rocket flew on the H195 like a champ! it did maintain a small amount of damage when it hit the ground but the damage is easily repairable so it didn't disqualify the rocket. I'll put up a more complete flight report with pictures, and videos tonight we we get home. Thanks for all the help from the people at DARS making sure my flight would be a success!

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Congrats!

Congrats. Glad everything went well. What kind of damage??

conman13 said:

Congrats. Glad everything went well. What kind of damage??

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Even with the 36" parachute it came down pretty fast, and it hit the hard clay/soil here in Texas right on the rear edge of the body tube. The tube had a small buckle right above the fins as a result. It then bounced over and chipped the paint up a bit on the other side, and dented the coupler but that popped back out with a small push from the inside. I'll post pictures once we get home. I'm still amazed though that even with a 36" parachute the rocket came down as fast as it did. I guess I'm just used to small, light, fast rockets that'll float to the next state over on a large parachute.

Congratulations!

The standard 36" chute is too small. I fly it with a Wildman/Recon Recovery 40" and it needs every bit of it.

wfcook said:

Congratulations!

The standard 36" chute is too small. I fly it with a Wildman/Recon Recovery 40" and it needs every bit of it.

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Thanks!

Yeah after today's flight I might just do that.

Congrats!

Very nice, happy to see you accomplished it.

Congrats!

Congrats!

Congrats on the L1 flight. Nice to meet you.
Did the keychain cam stay attached through the flight?

JW

Very nice flight, and congrats on the cert. Nice meeting you today.

Really is a beautiful rocket in person too.

Sorry, got caught up with stuff at home.

The Launch, as before stated, was a success.

So far after looking at the data from the Telemetrum collected during the flight, the rocket traveled to an altitude of 1190 feet, got to 225 mph, and experienced a maximum acceleration of 3400 feet/sec/sec or 106 G's. I was able to export the files to Google earth and try out the 3D mapping function, and it is probably one of the neatest things i've seen.


I could then stack the models on top of each other and get a comparative view in three dimensions.


The larger one is of my Aerotech Arrow I flew with the telemetrum on board.

The rocket did sustain a little damage. And after viewing the on-board video and looking at the places of impact I think I found out what happened. As the rocket was coming down, the avbay and the upper payload bay was hanging below the rest of the rocket swinging around underneath it. After looking at the video and looking at the rocket itself, I think that the nose of the rocket hit first and stopped the upper payload bay and avbay. The rear of the rocket then impacted the avbay and swung down and hit the other end on the ground denting that side.


The avbay, after hitting the ground, hits the rocket right on the edge.


The force buckles the air frame


The main body then swings down and hits the other side.

The only reason I'm thinking into it this much is because the fins are completely unscathed. there's hardly even any dirt on them let alone dents or scratches. I can all be fixed though. One of the people at the launch (forgot his name... ) said that I could fix the buckle by drilling holes into the buckle and reinforcing it with CA glue. I've heard of people doing this before, but I've never done it myself. any suggestions? as for the rest of the damages, I'm pretty sure I can fix those with some sanding, reinforcing (in some places), and some touch-up painting.

Here is the launch video:

[video=youtube_share;7DQX42ieufQ]https://youtu.be/7DQX42ieufQ[/video]
Hello motor mount! If you noticed the video ended quite abruptly, it was because the cheap on-board camera was crushed on impact. Still works!

Thanks to everyone on TRF who helped me make this one the best built rockets I have ever made! I think It's got a long future of flights ahead of it.

Txnrcr said:

Congrats on the L1 flight. Nice to meet you.
Did the keychain cam stay attached through the flight?

JW

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Yeah It did but it got crushed by something on landing and the cover fell off. It still works I'll just have to put some Duck tape on it.

Great looking rocket and great flight. Congratulations on your Level 1 certification!

I saw your Arrow flight as well. What kind of altitude did you get out of it?