Salvage-1
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- Mar 17, 2012
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This last weekend was OROC's last HPR launch of the year, out on Oregons high desert near Brothers. There were some awesome flights, with 3 days of TRA research launches, along will commercial and low power. Ceiling was low most of the time, but, we braved it and things were tried.
There was also some serious carnage. At one point there were 5 birds out on the HPR racks. The first three desert darted, the forth was a L2 attempt which separated at apogee with the booster section coming down in a flat spin and the nosecone and chute drifting off to another zip. The last one went up and came down fine. 1 out of 5 and this doesn't even go into the dozen or so other failures over the weekend.
Sadly for me I had a bad time. My cluster Kraken was supposed to start a pair of I223 skids off the pad and airstart a pair of H143 smokies. I am now thinking that the skids werent the best of choices. One lit and took the Kraken straight up to around 400ft, then the second came up to pressure and the rocket took a 90 degree sharp left towards Albuquerque. It rolled, to that the lit motor was at the bottom, and lifted its nose a degree or two as it sped near horizontal. Then, just before the second skid burned out, the Raven lit the H143's which came on instantly.
Rocket still going completely the wrong way and just as the smokies finished their burn, the nose dropped and the Raven sensed "apogee", firing the drogue, which stripped its lines and caused the rocket to start to do a flat spin. Then it sensed that we were lower than the 700ft that the main was set for, so the main went off. The main looked like it went off at around 50ft, with the rocket going around 100mph or so and a lazy, though not slow, glide towards destruction. The top of the lower section unwrapped. I would have expected a long hard zipper from the drogue deployment, but it just unwrapped the Blue Tube. Seriously chunky construction may have saved this rocket.
I waited and then followed the GPS (which wasnt really needed, the rocket traveled 750 yards and the dust cloud of impact was still visible. I approached filled with dread. After a quick inspection, this is an EASY rebuild, one section of 4" Bluetube and one coupler! Baby will fly again!
Next loss for me was my King Kraken, Polly. This was her 8th flight, and probably her last. An I212 Smokey took her up to 2303 ft at which point she tail slid a little before the Stratologger did its job and fired drogue. The shock cord, which I had checked previously, failed just below the parachute quick link, causing the fin section to fall in its own, and the top section to drift down on the drogue. At 500ft the main came out and lowered the nose, etc, down safely. The bottom section didn't do so well and came spinning in at a high rate of knots. At about 150ft, it seemed to stabilize with the front end down a little and it power glided into a sage bush, bouncing around 20ft back into the air. The impact with the sage ripped off two fins.
Third loss was my new two stage project, Wallace and Gromit. I had just launched the sustainer (gromit) to check everything and had a perfect flight to 1001 ft on a G131 Smokey, with both drogue and main coming out almost together as I had set main at 1000ft. This drifted down and landed around 50ft directly in front of my RV. Excellent!
I reset everything, changed batteries, loaded it up, and sat it on the prepped booster stage (wallace). I took it out, got the OK, and set it up. All things flashed and beeped as they should and I walked nervously back to the LCO table. A crowd gathered as he announced that this was a 2 stage flight, but I was only lighting the booster, and that I was testing stage separation and was not lighting the sustainer this time. Lift off was perfect, with separation exactly on time at burnout, with an audible pop of the separation charge going off. The booster cruised slowly on to around 1000ft, whilst the sustainer sailed on to an estimated 1200ft. Both turned over around the same time, and both came in ballistic, impacting around 30ft from each other, just past the left of the launch site. Volunteers immediately went out with me to help find the wreckage and it was one of the launches where i believe everyone on the flight-line felt the loss.
Lessons were learned. The choice of ground start motors on Got Squid were probably wrong, next time I will go with White or Blue as they seem to come to pressure faster. I have no idea what could have happened to BOTH of the altimeters on board the two stage flight (both sections were dual deploy). All the beeps and lights showed OK on the pad. The only thought is that at motor burnout, something happened. On the video, I can hear the pop of the charge, which means at least the GWiz in the booster stage was working at that moment in time. The Raven in the upper stage MAY have been damaged in the Got Squid flight, but I then used it for two nominal flights (including Gromit test) before this failure.
Ho hum. At least it is now officially 'build season', or 'rebuild season'.
There was also some serious carnage. At one point there were 5 birds out on the HPR racks. The first three desert darted, the forth was a L2 attempt which separated at apogee with the booster section coming down in a flat spin and the nosecone and chute drifting off to another zip. The last one went up and came down fine. 1 out of 5 and this doesn't even go into the dozen or so other failures over the weekend.
Sadly for me I had a bad time. My cluster Kraken was supposed to start a pair of I223 skids off the pad and airstart a pair of H143 smokies. I am now thinking that the skids werent the best of choices. One lit and took the Kraken straight up to around 400ft, then the second came up to pressure and the rocket took a 90 degree sharp left towards Albuquerque. It rolled, to that the lit motor was at the bottom, and lifted its nose a degree or two as it sped near horizontal. Then, just before the second skid burned out, the Raven lit the H143's which came on instantly.
Rocket still going completely the wrong way and just as the smokies finished their burn, the nose dropped and the Raven sensed "apogee", firing the drogue, which stripped its lines and caused the rocket to start to do a flat spin. Then it sensed that we were lower than the 700ft that the main was set for, so the main went off. The main looked like it went off at around 50ft, with the rocket going around 100mph or so and a lazy, though not slow, glide towards destruction. The top of the lower section unwrapped. I would have expected a long hard zipper from the drogue deployment, but it just unwrapped the Blue Tube. Seriously chunky construction may have saved this rocket.
I waited and then followed the GPS (which wasnt really needed, the rocket traveled 750 yards and the dust cloud of impact was still visible. I approached filled with dread. After a quick inspection, this is an EASY rebuild, one section of 4" Bluetube and one coupler! Baby will fly again!
Next loss for me was my King Kraken, Polly. This was her 8th flight, and probably her last. An I212 Smokey took her up to 2303 ft at which point she tail slid a little before the Stratologger did its job and fired drogue. The shock cord, which I had checked previously, failed just below the parachute quick link, causing the fin section to fall in its own, and the top section to drift down on the drogue. At 500ft the main came out and lowered the nose, etc, down safely. The bottom section didn't do so well and came spinning in at a high rate of knots. At about 150ft, it seemed to stabilize with the front end down a little and it power glided into a sage bush, bouncing around 20ft back into the air. The impact with the sage ripped off two fins.
Third loss was my new two stage project, Wallace and Gromit. I had just launched the sustainer (gromit) to check everything and had a perfect flight to 1001 ft on a G131 Smokey, with both drogue and main coming out almost together as I had set main at 1000ft. This drifted down and landed around 50ft directly in front of my RV. Excellent!
I reset everything, changed batteries, loaded it up, and sat it on the prepped booster stage (wallace). I took it out, got the OK, and set it up. All things flashed and beeped as they should and I walked nervously back to the LCO table. A crowd gathered as he announced that this was a 2 stage flight, but I was only lighting the booster, and that I was testing stage separation and was not lighting the sustainer this time. Lift off was perfect, with separation exactly on time at burnout, with an audible pop of the separation charge going off. The booster cruised slowly on to around 1000ft, whilst the sustainer sailed on to an estimated 1200ft. Both turned over around the same time, and both came in ballistic, impacting around 30ft from each other, just past the left of the launch site. Volunteers immediately went out with me to help find the wreckage and it was one of the launches where i believe everyone on the flight-line felt the loss.
Lessons were learned. The choice of ground start motors on Got Squid were probably wrong, next time I will go with White or Blue as they seem to come to pressure faster. I have no idea what could have happened to BOTH of the altimeters on board the two stage flight (both sections were dual deploy). All the beeps and lights showed OK on the pad. The only thought is that at motor burnout, something happened. On the video, I can hear the pop of the charge, which means at least the GWiz in the booster stage was working at that moment in time. The Raven in the upper stage MAY have been damaged in the Got Squid flight, but I then used it for two nominal flights (including Gromit test) before this failure.
Ho hum. At least it is now officially 'build season', or 'rebuild season'.
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Sorry to hear about your losses and I feel your pain. I'm with you for using easy to light motors off the pad. I tried to do a skid cluster with my Kraken and had about the same results. Any in flight photos of video? Steve Jurvetson took a photo sequence of my mishap 
