Alright so recovery... This is going to be pretty long winded but I hope you will bear with me. When I originally bought this kit in 2018, I ordered a lot of parts before really knowing what space I was gonna be working with but it was the black friday sale and I figured "I'll make it work". I was a little bit experienced in rocketry at this point but I was young and immature. I thought I was hot sh*t. I was apart of the liquid rocket lab at cal poly pomona, I had just gotten my L1, I mixed my first of two O-class motors for the FAR1030 competition which was designed by my partner and I. I was a core member of every rocket based club on campus. Oh how that has bit me in the a** 4 years later lol!
First mistake: Bought an eggtimer proton for a 38mm MD kit. Eggtimers are great and Chris makes amazing products! I bought the proton because black friday, it has the most features, and "ill make it fit".
Second mistake: Bought an eggtimer TRS. Black Friday, has the most features plus I could use redundancy for charges, and "Ill make it fit". (You can see where this is going now, right?)
Third mistake: Bought a Rocketman streamer for the drogue, didn't pay attention to the packed length being 7 inches long lol. J570 with aeropack retainer with the ebay coupler left me about 6 inches of total space.
Fourth mistake: Bought two 1/4 inch kevlar harness from onebadhawk (amazing product! doesnt fit...)
So essentially every single piece of recovery equipment I purchased ended up not fitting or being so tight that I worried about deployment issues. This was a very expensive mistake to make. This project was supposed to be relatively cheap and if I knew what I would have needed it would have been. Knowledge and experience is often obtained through headaches and pain.
Im sure that you could make the proton work with some real optimizing and either printing or lasercutting a custom sled but I did not have the time or the ability to do that. I needed to get the L1 students projects done before the semester ended, pass my classes, study for the L2 exam. I wanted to purchase whatever I could off the shelf and make what I had work through simple modifications. This was just not feasible in the end though. I picked up a sled from additive aerospace and planned on ziptie-ing the proton to it because the drill holes didn't match up. Even small zipties made this not fit. So then I decided to use electrical tape. This fit but the proton was too tall.
I tried to bend the two silver pieces on the back which worked and didn't alter any function for the time being. Until my second pop test where the right side channels were not showing continuity all of a sudden. Im not sure if the cause was because of these pieces being slightly angled backwards or if its shotty solder work. Chris probably would know but either way this specific altimeter is not the right tool for this job. I plan on fixing the proton and using it as one of the altimeters on my L3 because it really is fantastic. The wifi arming is really nice and the web interface is stellar.
I dont need to explain why the TRS didnt fit in my nosecone right lol? I ended up borrowing my buddies eggfinder so all was well for the time being.
Regarding parachutes and shock cord I ended up contacting Rocketman and both Buddy and Ky were super helpful. They pointed me towards their 15 ft 1200 lb braided kevlar chord and oh man is this nice. It also has an important feature regarding the loop which makes overhand knots really easy on the middle loop. I purchased two of these. They then suggested that I get a 12 inch ultra light parabolic chute for my drogue and the 2 ft ultra light high performance cd 2.2 for the main. I got two small swivels with these and wham bam thank you mam, they fit in my airframe.
I ended up using no quick links and just trying overhand knotts through the eyebolts and the swivel and the parachute. Rocketmans chord makes this extremely easy. This saved a lot of space and was necessary after the failed pop test from the beginning of this thread where a quicklink got completely jammed in the body tube (had to remove motor case and retainer and pull it out the back) which prevented the parachute from pulling out.
Note: I would totally do a drogue-less recovery if this wasn't for a cert flight.
First mistake: Bought an eggtimer proton for a 38mm MD kit. Eggtimers are great and Chris makes amazing products! I bought the proton because black friday, it has the most features, and "ill make it fit".
Second mistake: Bought an eggtimer TRS. Black Friday, has the most features plus I could use redundancy for charges, and "Ill make it fit". (You can see where this is going now, right?)
Third mistake: Bought a Rocketman streamer for the drogue, didn't pay attention to the packed length being 7 inches long lol. J570 with aeropack retainer with the ebay coupler left me about 6 inches of total space.
Fourth mistake: Bought two 1/4 inch kevlar harness from onebadhawk (amazing product! doesnt fit...)
So essentially every single piece of recovery equipment I purchased ended up not fitting or being so tight that I worried about deployment issues. This was a very expensive mistake to make. This project was supposed to be relatively cheap and if I knew what I would have needed it would have been. Knowledge and experience is often obtained through headaches and pain.
Im sure that you could make the proton work with some real optimizing and either printing or lasercutting a custom sled but I did not have the time or the ability to do that. I needed to get the L1 students projects done before the semester ended, pass my classes, study for the L2 exam. I wanted to purchase whatever I could off the shelf and make what I had work through simple modifications. This was just not feasible in the end though. I picked up a sled from additive aerospace and planned on ziptie-ing the proton to it because the drill holes didn't match up. Even small zipties made this not fit. So then I decided to use electrical tape. This fit but the proton was too tall.
I tried to bend the two silver pieces on the back which worked and didn't alter any function for the time being. Until my second pop test where the right side channels were not showing continuity all of a sudden. Im not sure if the cause was because of these pieces being slightly angled backwards or if its shotty solder work. Chris probably would know but either way this specific altimeter is not the right tool for this job. I plan on fixing the proton and using it as one of the altimeters on my L3 because it really is fantastic. The wifi arming is really nice and the web interface is stellar.
I dont need to explain why the TRS didnt fit in my nosecone right lol? I ended up borrowing my buddies eggfinder so all was well for the time being.
Regarding parachutes and shock cord I ended up contacting Rocketman and both Buddy and Ky were super helpful. They pointed me towards their 15 ft 1200 lb braided kevlar chord and oh man is this nice. It also has an important feature regarding the loop which makes overhand knots really easy on the middle loop. I purchased two of these. They then suggested that I get a 12 inch ultra light parabolic chute for my drogue and the 2 ft ultra light high performance cd 2.2 for the main. I got two small swivels with these and wham bam thank you mam, they fit in my airframe.
I ended up using no quick links and just trying overhand knotts through the eyebolts and the swivel and the parachute. Rocketmans chord makes this extremely easy. This saved a lot of space and was necessary after the failed pop test from the beginning of this thread where a quicklink got completely jammed in the body tube (had to remove motor case and retainer and pull it out the back) which prevented the parachute from pulling out.
Note: I would totally do a drogue-less recovery if this wasn't for a cert flight.
)
I would love to see some finished photos!
