Motor: Aerotech L1256WS-p 75mm.
July 9th 2022
Altitude: 1,900'
Max velocity: 340 ft/s
Landed in mess in the middle of the field. The main chute was fouled by the payload tube but landed with no damage.
We added a buddy being deployed with the main, paratrooper Snoopy.
I did plan to fly the rocket again in late 2021 but due to a anomaly during prepping the rocket I decided to shelf the project for the fall/winter. I came back to it in the spring with a plan to paint the rocket like a Minion, blue bottom with 2 black fins, black switch band and yellow top. My daughter loves the minions, and this was decided and painted just before the world was on high alert and Ukraine was invaded by Russia. I came to find out the Ukraine flag is Blue and Yellow. As of now the rocket is still painted this way. I do plan to work on filling the spirals and making a go of the actual sounding rocket paint job as I already have the material.
I decided to check the separation charges again after the paint job. I did up the charge size a little from the test flight.
We also decided on adding Snoopy our paratrooper with the main parachute. He drifts nice and vertical on a well used 24" PS2 chute.
I had assembled the motor in 2021 so before heading up to the launch site I inspected the motor and re-lubricated the o rings. The amazing Aerotech L1256WS roared to life and lifted the "Minion" skyward to a apogee of just over 1,900 feet. I was able to again download the data off the ARTS2 and simulate drag and thrust curve for the motor. I had the sled more secure this launch and a very clean accurate looking thrust curve was plotted.
After the test flight I reworked the recovery gear and recovery plan a little. I picked up a smaller drogue chute, it was a Rocketman Pro experimental drogue 7 foot. I noticed the decent rate was still a little slow and resulted in a almost vertical payload tube. It was rotating in a cone shape and when the main charge fired the nose cone was almost pointed too the booster and everything came straight down and the payload tube landed on the canopy of the main before it full inflated.
The rocket landed on the field with a thud, no structural damage to the rocket.
The boost was nice and straight, I did not have anything for fin tabs sorted for this flight so it was not a true scale Viking 7 sounding rocket yet.
So the Ebay for this project has been a struggle and one that almost caused me some major harm. I mentioned a anomaly during prep, here it is. I had my Ebay on the toolbox in my garage, with recovery harnesses hanging off both ends. I had the sled with altimeters installed, the batteries had twist and tape wires setup going to each altimeter, the wires were out of the switch band with a clean cut, no stripped wires folded away from each other and electrical tapped. I had the ematches hooked up directly to the altimeters and in the charge well cups, I have sense moved to twist and tape on one leg of the ematches for all 4 charges.
As I was prepping the deployment charges I had measured out the black powder and was putting it in the charge wells, covering and taping. As I moved the ebay from the drogue side to main I started to hear a very faint beeping from inside the ebay, very faint. I have tinnitus in my ears and took some focusing to hear what was happening. So after tapping up the main charge I came to realize the situation I was in. I thank God the charge did not go off in my face, I had just started to make an exit plan and rotated the ebay as the drogue charge went off, it was pointed downish and across my chest.
As that happened I thought about reading when altimeters miss fire, normally the drogue first then the main.... that was pointed up and about 10" from my face.... I managed to toss the ebay away from me onto my toolbox as the main charge fired pointed at the wall. The garage doors were closed and I ended up with burned eye brows and arm hair and very shaken up by the entire ordeal.
I opened the garage, made sure there were no more fires and dusted my self off. After returning from the launch that day I tried to be methodical in how this happened. I tried everything I could think of and could not get the altimeter to receive power enough to start beeping slightly but not fully turn on. I did determine this was the older MW rrcx2.