I posted earlier the results of two flights to 600-ish feet, with releases at 200 feet.
Today I decided it was time to get up there a little higher, so we loaded a G77-7R and flew to 1375 feet, again set for release at 200 feet.
Before flight, I painted the rocket Day-Glo orange to make it easier to find. But it ended up not being necessary, as even though it was a little windier today once again the rocket landed pretty close (perhaps 100 feet away).
My chute pack this time looked like the below, a simple burrito wrap.
I have decided that it is *much* more important to worry about getting your chute out than it is to worry about having it already mostly open when Chute Release lets go. In my launches over the past two days, the chute unrolls and opens pretty quickly, even wrapped up like this.
As I mentioned earlier, the LEDs look ghastly bright here, but they won't when they are shining through the black injection molded cases.
Here's the AltimeterThree data of the important part of the flight:
This time it's nice to see that the rate slows from about 27 fps to 17 fps
right at 200 feet, though you can see that it takes a 2 or 3 seconds to calm down and for the shocks and swinging to settle out.
My video was spoiled by the fact that I put a Macro instead of the Telephoto lens on my phone. So everything looks far away, and you can *barely* see the moment of release. Sigh. Might be time to get a real video recorder with a good zoom on it. One of our testers just bought such a unit, so hopefully we'll have some more professional video to share soon.
But I'm pretty happy with how it's flying right now!
More to come.