Successful Rocket Search and Rescue With Quadcopter

[Ravenex]

So I went to the Woosh launch at Bong on Fathers Day weekend with my dad, wife, and kids. We planned to fly my rockets, the kids rockets, and my dads new scratch built low and slow "Zomok". So we set up his 20 foot tower and started prepping rockets. A little after lunch time Zomok was ready to fly and we loaded it on the pad. What followed was a beautiful boost followed by a tragic lack of deployment and a loud thud in the distance behind some trees. We put on our muck boots and started walking a line through the tall grass to look for the crash site. Unfortunately we didn't see a direct way through the trees and split to either side of the line to search. The grass was over eye level and after walking all the way to the riding path beyond the field we determined that with the grass and bush it was a hopeless effort, even if we were feet from it we may never see the rocket.

At this point I decided to call a friend of mine and ask him to his quad copter out to the field the next day and do some aerial reconnaissance. He is starting up a aerial photography business and doing work for free to tune his skills until he gets a commercial license, and he was happy to come out. He flew two trips over the line we though the crash was on and we downloaded the video. The first flight came up empty and the second video was corrupted. We went home expecting to never see the rocket again. The next day during my lunch break I recovered the second video and was amazed. About 30 seconds into the video something caught my eye, it was the lower half of the rocket near some trees and a cross shaped rock formation. On the video you can clearly make out the concentric circle of the motor as well as the shape of the fins. I assumed the remainder of the rocket was buried, but we had always suspected the rocket would have crumpled or buried and then broken off at the top of the transition. I was able to match the pattern of trees with google earths satellite view, and planned a trip for the following weekend to try recovering it.

We arrived at the field and walked straight out to the site through a small opening in the trees we had not seen before. Right were we expected we found the tail but the rest of the airframe wasn't under it. It turns out the cross shaped formation, 20 feet away on the other side of a tree, was the debris field formed from the flattened airframe with the nose cone of to the south and a large piece of the transition to the north. Some analysis of the site indicated that the rocket went through the tree and broke in half at the base of the transition. The tail tumbled down through the tree and the upper half deflected and landed flat 15 feet away. The sudden deceleration must have sheared the pins and separated the nose cone as it was found next to the remains of the body tube and the front 5 inches of the body had core sampled into the ground.

We carried the lower section and recovery components out separately and bagged the rest in a tarp. In the end the engine casing, the chutes, and chute protectors were all undamaged. The cable cutters were a bit corroded but probably cleanable. Everything else was put out on the curb on trash day. Unfortunately neither flight computer survived so there was no data available but all of the charges had fired.

[video=youtube;5CiPhBRGlng]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CiPhBRGlng&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[ksaves2]

So why no deployments? All four charges undersized? Bummer. I'm no expert on quadcopters but it you had a GPS tracker on the rocket some of the copters I'm told can be programmed to fly to a programmed set of coordinates. Input that last
transmitted position and the copter could go directly to it. Nice rocket. Had it ever flown before? Kurt

 

[djs]

This is really awesome. You could rent out his services at every Bong launch. I wish someone had a quad copter at my launches at Southern thunder

 

[pythonrock]

The 2 apogee charges were smokeless powder - RedDot - with multiple consistent ground tests. Hard to say why they didn't work in the air. But I think it will still be ffff BP from now on. The main was to be deployed with cable cutters - if the rocket didn't separate at apogee, the mains won't deploy.
I agree about the copter - every launch should have one.
NEVER would have found the rocket without it

 

[ksaves2]

The 2 apogee charges were smokeless powder - RedDot - with multiple consistent ground tests. Hard to say why they didn't work in the air. But I think it will still be ffff BP from now on. The main was to be deployed with cable cutters - if the rocket didn't separate at apogee, the mains won't deploy.
I agree about the copter - every launch should have one.
NEVER would have found the rocket without it

Should have been 4F. From what I have read, unless one has consistent confinement with BP "substitutes" burning can be incomplete. That was the problem. Some launch sites forbid R/C flights on launch days so YMMV. You did your search after the launch
was over so if there would have been potential conflict, it was avoided.
That copter was likely a very sizable investment and by the quality of the video not an "el cheapo" toy. You were lucky the sustainer hit in a clearing. If it was under a bunch of trees, would have been much harder or impossible to
find from an aerial platform. From what I hear about Bong, it's a place ripe for GPS trackers. Still, I'm sorry about what happened to your Dad's rocket. Looked very impressive. Kurt