Thanks...if only the first flight had as well.
I gave it the old college try today at our club's launch. Some of the things I was trying to do worked, but the overall flight was not what I would call a success. I couldn't get an Open Rocket simulation built. I got all four motors to light. The launch rod through the center worked. I got a balanced spin out of it. But it was not a stable flight. It was close, I guess, but it was not successful. For one thing, shortly after it left the launch rod, it turned sideways where it was almost 90 degrees from where it should have been. It did not flip completely over, and it did not fly sideways into the crowd, but it did not go up any more. It seemed like it just sat there for a bit spinning and then started dropping, still at the angle. Since it hadn't gone more than MAYBE 30-50 feet, the ejection charge did not go off until it was oh...maybe...6 inches from the ground.
I wanted to see it, so I did not take any pictures or video, but there were others there taking pictures and I'll try to track some down and post them. Now I'm left trying to decide what caused the problem. Was the CG-CP relationship off? Did I not get fast enough spin, or the spin didn't get up to speed fast enough? Since it seemed to hold its position, albeit near horizontal, for a fair amount of time, does that mean it might have been stable if I had higher initial thrust (I used B6-4s)? Did it only stop its flip because the thrust had stopped, meaning I had too much initial thrust? If I repair the minor damage, do I try it again with C6 motors and see if more power helps it get up to speed better? Or do I go with maybe the Quest D5s, with a nice slow/long burn which may be better than higher initial thrust? I could maybe throw in a coupler and extend the body tube to add some stability. I could maybe try to add some nose weight (tricky without blocking the path of the launch rod). It might be that the fins simply were not wide enough at the aft end, or that the angle was too large. Hopefully I'll get to see some of the pictures that were taken and maybe get a better idea of what went wrong. If I can figure it out, I may still go on to Phase III making the appropriate corrections, as I'm sure it was a combination of things. I'll have to think on it some. This might be a good time to work on my Flis Stingray that's been sitting neglected for a while.
On the positive side, the weather was just about perfect. I got good flights from many of my rockets, and great flights from some including my boost gliders. Even my prototype two stage version of my Plumber's Helper (I call it
Number 2) flew well, even if it had a bit of a wiggle.