Gosh, has it been nearly a year already? This project sat for a while, and I finally got it back out on the field for a mostly successful second flight. Major changes since last time are:
- The booms are retained to the core with light line tied to the post
- The sails are retained on the boom with a little thread tied to the hard points on the boom
- I tried washing the sails, but they're dingy until they die.
Here's what the overall unit and a detail of the booms look like:
I was originally going to fly in the same configuration as the last time with all of the burn strings, but then one of my threads broke as I was assembling it. The heck with it, I said. Surely the air pressure will push the sails down!
And it did, which takes about a third of the time off of prepping this horrifically-complicated rocket. So I'll definitely do that in the future. The three booms have the rubber bands still as intended, going straight from the trailing edge of the sail to the next boom, then up to the post. The others have slipped in various ways, but it didn't seem to matter much.
It was a really nice flight on 3xD12's, with a good spin on the way up, good deployment of the chute, and nothing broken. The only fly in the ointment was that one of the side D12-3 ejection charges cut the shock cord, so it fell from 20 or so feet up. No biggie though since it landed on soft sod.
Hopefully,
@DirkTheDaring will have a video shortly. Thanks for the D12-0, too!