- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 11,627
- Reaction score
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Well, sometimes success is not what you expect.
Sorry, I have no video as all I had was my Estes ignition system and my Lovely Assistant was unavailable.
Anyhoo, flight as follows
A10-3 motor
Corkscrew liftoff. Net trajectory was straight up despite 10mph winds.
@Ronz Rocketz is really good at eyeballing trajectory. I don’t fly altimeters, I am guessing 150-200 feet, not bad for an A motor, and ejection charge (vented through the forward port) knocked it askew as expected. Although hard to tell exactly how quick it happened, effectively it went pretty much immediately horizontal.
So far, so good.
In one sense, unfortunately, it did NOT go into a horizontal attitude and straight vertical descent. So it didn’t BellyFlop
Instead it went into a perfect backslide.
Not sure how it decided which direction TO backslide, but in this case it it went WITH the wind.
Out of the field (bad)
Over the creek (good)
Into an empty parking lot (also good) although a truck came by after it landed and swerved to not de-carrotate it), at least 300 feet from apogee ground position, or since it went up pretty much svertically, 300 feet downwind from pad.
So failed at bellyflop. BUT, I did not think it was possible to GET a backslide with an 18” BT-20 rocket, so maybe I need to rename it Serendipity. The classic Back Spin rockets have bee in the 32 to 50 length to body tube ratio, this is about 21, plus nose cone.
Was very glad I went with an A motor, it potentially would have gone past the parking lot into another field and been lost with anything bigger.
It was a satisfying flight, maybe Odd’l rockets should take a look at it (nudge nudge hint hint to @hcmbanjo and if he is still involved @jadebox if they are looking for something different.)
All thoughts especially @sr205347d , @Rktman , and @Dotini welcome.
Sorry, I have no video as all I had was my Estes ignition system and my Lovely Assistant was unavailable.
Anyhoo, flight as follows
A10-3 motor
Corkscrew liftoff. Net trajectory was straight up despite 10mph winds.
@Ronz Rocketz is really good at eyeballing trajectory. I don’t fly altimeters, I am guessing 150-200 feet, not bad for an A motor, and ejection charge (vented through the forward port) knocked it askew as expected. Although hard to tell exactly how quick it happened, effectively it went pretty much immediately horizontal.
So far, so good.
In one sense, unfortunately, it did NOT go into a horizontal attitude and straight vertical descent. So it didn’t BellyFlop
Instead it went into a perfect backslide.
Not sure how it decided which direction TO backslide, but in this case it it went WITH the wind.
Out of the field (bad)
Over the creek (good)
Into an empty parking lot (also good) although a truck came by after it landed and swerved to not de-carrotate it), at least 300 feet from apogee ground position, or since it went up pretty much svertically, 300 feet downwind from pad.
So failed at bellyflop. BUT, I did not think it was possible to GET a backslide with an 18” BT-20 rocket, so maybe I need to rename it Serendipity. The classic Back Spin rockets have bee in the 32 to 50 length to body tube ratio, this is about 21, plus nose cone.
Was very glad I went with an A motor, it potentially would have gone past the parking lot into another field and been lost with anything bigger.
It was a satisfying flight, maybe Odd’l rockets should take a look at it (nudge nudge hint hint to @hcmbanjo and if he is still involved @jadebox if they are looking for something different.)
All thoughts especially @sr205347d , @Rktman , and @Dotini welcome.
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