firemanup
Well-Known Member
As many of you have already heard my L3 cert flight was a success.
Thanks to all of those that helped both my taps, friends, family, and friends on this forum, I don't want to mention names at this point as i'm sure i'll forget some, but i'll get a detailed list on my website when I have time.
Short story.
We went out early Saturday morning to setup and got to the field around 8:30 am. There was a little breeze and high clouds but it was plenty nice enough to launch so we began prepping.
While we were prepping the rocket the winds came up a little bit more and the clouds disappeared. Forcast was for winds in the area of 12mph and that's about what it felt like so everything was good.
During the prep I was relaxed and felt just fine and got the whole thing prepped per the checklist in about 2 hours.
Then it was time to build the motor, a CTI M1400. At this point I started to get a little nervous as it felt like a point of no return here and I was starting to realize it was really going to go up.
After the motor was built and ready to go took pictures with family and then took it out to the away pad. (After some procrastination for some reason)
Placed on the pad with some help from my brother and Joe and it was ready to go. Altimeters were armed, then a little more procrastination and I finally went ahead and hooked up the ignitor.
The countdown was called and off it roared. About 3 seconds into the burn I got nervous for real. I've built plenty that have handled more speed and G's than this was going to with half the extra reinforcement so I knew I shouldn't have anything to worry about but for some reason I got real nervous there and remember thinking, hold together, hold together...... and it did...
She coasted up for quite a while then got to the top and the missile works RRC2's detected apogee and fired the apogee charge seperating the rocket in two..
I'd chosen to go drogueless that morning after a few pushes that direction from my brother and it worked very well, came down nicely with out fluttering around too much.
At 1,000' the RRC2 fired the main charge of 4.5 grams and popped the cone, pilot chute, and the deployment bag if I remember correctly at which point the cheers and woohoo's came out of the woodwork. The pilot chute caught air and pulled the bag off the main chute and it inflated nicely.
Everything floated down nice and soft about 150 yds from the flight line. Upon inspection the only damage I had was some scrapes from the rail on the booster tube but just a couple small ones.. Other than that there was absolutely no damage, not even a scratch.
Absolutely my best ever launch on anything and it luckily came on my L3 flight. The up was picture perfect and so was the dual deployment, it was a great feeling.
My luck ran short on flight picturs and video but i'll post what i have at this point, i'm hoping for more from friends at the launch.
I'll get complete details and pics of everything on my webpage in the next day or two.
Next few pics are from a ways off that I, and my brother took, unfortunately we just didn't zoom in enough to get real good shots..
First coming up to pressue and starting up the rail
Thanks to all of those that helped both my taps, friends, family, and friends on this forum, I don't want to mention names at this point as i'm sure i'll forget some, but i'll get a detailed list on my website when I have time.
Short story.
We went out early Saturday morning to setup and got to the field around 8:30 am. There was a little breeze and high clouds but it was plenty nice enough to launch so we began prepping.
While we were prepping the rocket the winds came up a little bit more and the clouds disappeared. Forcast was for winds in the area of 12mph and that's about what it felt like so everything was good.
During the prep I was relaxed and felt just fine and got the whole thing prepped per the checklist in about 2 hours.
Then it was time to build the motor, a CTI M1400. At this point I started to get a little nervous as it felt like a point of no return here and I was starting to realize it was really going to go up.
After the motor was built and ready to go took pictures with family and then took it out to the away pad. (After some procrastination for some reason)
Placed on the pad with some help from my brother and Joe and it was ready to go. Altimeters were armed, then a little more procrastination and I finally went ahead and hooked up the ignitor.
The countdown was called and off it roared. About 3 seconds into the burn I got nervous for real. I've built plenty that have handled more speed and G's than this was going to with half the extra reinforcement so I knew I shouldn't have anything to worry about but for some reason I got real nervous there and remember thinking, hold together, hold together...... and it did...
She coasted up for quite a while then got to the top and the missile works RRC2's detected apogee and fired the apogee charge seperating the rocket in two..
I'd chosen to go drogueless that morning after a few pushes that direction from my brother and it worked very well, came down nicely with out fluttering around too much.
At 1,000' the RRC2 fired the main charge of 4.5 grams and popped the cone, pilot chute, and the deployment bag if I remember correctly at which point the cheers and woohoo's came out of the woodwork. The pilot chute caught air and pulled the bag off the main chute and it inflated nicely.
Everything floated down nice and soft about 150 yds from the flight line. Upon inspection the only damage I had was some scrapes from the rail on the booster tube but just a couple small ones.. Other than that there was absolutely no damage, not even a scratch.
Absolutely my best ever launch on anything and it luckily came on my L3 flight. The up was picture perfect and so was the dual deployment, it was a great feeling.
My luck ran short on flight picturs and video but i'll post what i have at this point, i'm hoping for more from friends at the launch.
I'll get complete details and pics of everything on my webpage in the next day or two.
Next few pics are from a ways off that I, and my brother took, unfortunately we just didn't zoom in enough to get real good shots..
First coming up to pressue and starting up the rail
