As many of you heard, this flight (and also the only flight I got to do at BALLS, thanks to the weather) was less than optimal. Some photos first...
I flew it on the Aerotech M1550R like I had planned. When I pushed the button, it took off at a fairly sharp angle. I originally thought it had just weathercocked, but upon further inspection I had dropped the aft rail button on takeoff. (It was still inside the rail after launch.) Need to rethink my attachment method there, as well...
A few seconds after burnout, we heard a "bad noise" from the ground. Hard to identify what it was, but since it took place long after the mach transition it wasn't promising to hear. Upon looking at the GPS, I see that I never re-acquired lock after launch - f***. After driving blindly around in circles for a little while, the Hillbillies (I think) called on the FRS radio with reports of a found rocket that met the exact description of mine. So we headed over to their pad to talk with them, at which point something that looked like my rocket was in sight. Unfortunately, it turned out to just be the airframe (with a short zipper in it), motor case, and some harness. Some more time driving around looking for the nosecone and parachutes turned up nothing.
Later that afternoon, I stopped by the LCO desk just to see if any other pieces of my rocket had turned up. And guess what was there? My nosecone! Er, what was left of it anyways. Looking at the remains, it was quite obvious that it broke free from the rest of the rocket and came in ballistic. The whole thing was busted up pretty badly, as you can see...
The Stratologger was unscathed and the RRC2+ had components broken off. But after replacing the broken 9V batteries, both altimeters powered up fine, much to my surprise. As luck would have it, Jim Amos from Missileworks was present at BALLS - he's a really great guy and it was nice to shake his hand! Jim listened to my dilemma, added my altimeter to his pile of stuff he was bringing back to Colorado, and fixed it up for me. Not long after that event, he sent me a summary of the repairs and mailed the altimeter back to me, good as new. Thanks again Jim!!
My BRB900 and Tender Descender remain out at Black Rock somewhere.
As for the flight itself. Looking at the recorded data from both altimeters, the early deployment happened well after the mach transition, so it wasn't a mach issue. (As I had originally thought.)
Everything beeped correctly on the pad...
The nosecone had 3 x 4-40 nylon screws, so it didn't drag separate...
Hmm. I guess this one shall remain a mystery for the ages! What continues to baffle me is the fact that both altimeters recorded a peak altitude of only about 5K-6K, nowhere near what I was expecting. So here we have a bit of work gone in a few short seconds and an M1550 Redline down the drain. BUT, I'm not too disappointed as this seemed rather insignificant compared to
my next crash...
So, onwards and upwards!
Great BALLS of Fire 2.0
I'm actually looking forward to this rebuild as it will allow me to make some design changes that I needed to do anyways. Here's the "punch list" so far:
- Redesign deployment scheme.
- Replace nosecone.
- New harnesses, chutes, etc.
- Re-attach rail buttons somehow. My previous method wasn't strong enough.
The other line item I had to add today was "repair fin can." Upon further examination (a fancy way of saying I hadn't looked at this rocket in months), I noticed that one of the aluminum fins had gotten bent out of position upon landing on the playa. Damn. Fortunately though, after getting in touch with Mike Fisher he said that is IS repairable. I could probably even do it myself, but Mike was willing to put it back on his metal forming equipment to get everything back into position. (Much better than whatever results I could try come up with using hand tools.)
UPS delivered my order from Proline Rocketry yesterday:
Here we have a new nosecone and a set of av-bay bulkheads. I know some of you out there (Manny) were a bit concerned with my previous nosecone selection, so I went for a filament-wound 5:1 Von Karman with coupler this time. Seems much better suited for my application. Gary T. is a fabulous guy to do business with, easily one of the best dealers to order Performance Rocketry composite parts from these days. He's quick to return phone calls/emails, and ships fast. Thanks Gary!
As for deployment, I never was entirely pleased with the reliability of my previous method, and it never worked properly anyways. This time I'm going to use a trick I learned from my buddy Steve Heller (aka prophecy). Rather than glue the nosecone coupler in, use it as a standard av-bay with shear pins on both sides. Drogue chute inside the airframe, main chute inside the nosecone itself. (I may end up reversing these depending on space.) The whole design will be much cleaner and simpler than the Tender Descender/line cutter idea. And thanks Steve for the suggestion!
For altimeters, I'll probably swap out the Stratologger for a Raven2, just because. (Keeping the RRC2+ as a backup.)
More to come as progress is made!