That's when you hand someone else the camera and say,"Excuse me, but could you please take a picture of my rocket at the critical point of ignition please?"
Good luck tommorow.....
____________________
-Chris
Sadly, though I didn't do that...
The Diet Seven flew beautifully. Full ignition of all seven motors, well timed deployment, lovely flight. It landed between the launch pad and my chair, can't complain about that! It did zipper the tube about 3" or so, but that's my fault for using the super-thin kevlar as a shock cord. I'll see about putting a length of something else where it exits the body tube, or doing something to reinforce it there. I may actually re-build it antizipper, possibly with an electronics bay to avoid the issues with delay (I ended up using 6 B's and a C to try to optimize the coast to match the 6 second delay on the B's). It will likely fly on 7 C6-0's if I redo it with electronics.
The Grape Nehi flew on an F25-7, which was really too long a delay. It arced over somewhat coming off the pad though, and was a little anemic on liftoff. We loaded an F25-4 for a second flight but had ignitor issues and ended up not flying.
The Onyx got a name (Mr. Goodbar, for it's yellow and red color scheme), and we bought a G38-7FJ on site to fly it with. Sadly, the motor never ejected (the cap is still in place) and the rocket lawn darted
. The tube split in a spiral clear to the centering ring, and the motor got jammed up into the motor mount, squashing the tube that extended past the rear ring. The nosecone looks to be in good shape though, and the fins stayed on
(see? wood glue is all you need!).
We took a casualty, but all in all, a good day. I'm off to file a MESS report and email aerotech about the faulty motor.
-Rick
