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1. Featherweight electronics repair: Since I started Featherweight Altimeters, I have been repairing products by request, and I find I'm not very good at it. I can fix the boards, but only when I remember to do it and where I put them. When I do make time to do repairs, it takes effort and...

I have been investigating a report from a user of two deployment ematches igniting instantly when a 3S lipo battery (12.6V) was connected to a Blue Raven altimeter via a screw switch. After looking into possible causes of this event, which did not happen when using the same hardware before or...

The Featherweight UI phone app, available for both Android and iOS, now supports both the Blue Raven and the Featherweight GPS system! Here's a shot of the tracker display: This is just going out to the beta users via Apple TestFlight and Android Firebase so far, because there are some...

The Featherweight iFIP app, used for the Featherweight GPS tracker, is released through Apple's TestFlight in a series of builds, each of which expire after 90 days. For the past few years we have been refreshing the build so that its availability is uninterrupted. But yesterday we forgot to...

For my StratoSpear rocket, I'm making 2 ejectable av-bays for the booster and the 2nd stage that include a Featherweight GPS tracker. I'm adding Featherweight magnetic switches to the trackers, and I'll document the process here since it might be of general interest. This requires...

I think we're still some weeks away from the first public release, but today we had a new milestone with the new app pointing toward a tracker and providing a distance calculation. About half of the data and icons have some problems, and the channel configuration is not working correctly, but...

Things are coming together for a flight on my new sustainer rocket tomorrow, using a Loki J1026 motor. This stage is designed as a new sustainer for my StratoSpear 3-stage rocket, and most of the build thread is over in the multi-stage sub-forum. For electronics, I'm using 2 new 29mm...

The app is called "Featherweight UI" but it comes up when you just search on "Featherweight". Currently it's build 200, with just Blue Raven functionality. We are actively working on adding the Featherweight GPS Tracker to the app. As we do updates I'll probably release some updates...

I decided to check out FinSim before committing to the fins of my new build. Looking into it, I'm finding a very counter-intuitve result that makes me very skeptical about its answers. My current design looks like this: and I get results for divergence of Mach 2.51 and flutter at Mach...

Yesterday I had a fun flight at Tripoli Colorado in Hartsel that tied or maybe broke my personal record for highest-G boost at 120.1Gs. TBH, there's not a lot to see in this video below, though I think one frame did catch the rocket. The sound is kind of fun. Some fun facts from the Blue...

I've been working on a new capability for the Blue Raven firmware over the last few days, which is to limit the current that flows into the output in the event of a short circuit in the load. Load short circuits aren't that uncommon. Anyone who is firing a head-end igniter for an airstart...

The original 38mm av-bay kit includes 2 bulkheads that clamp around a 2" long 38mm coupler tube, which seals the electronics inside. The outside faces of the bulkheads have the ends of the threaded rods exposed, so you can attach your ematch wires. But attaching your harness or something else...

I have just recently switched over to a new production run of Featherweight GPS trackers, using the new UBlox SAM-M10Q GPS modules. These modules operate with less power for longer battery life, they can track more satellites simultaneously, and the max reported altitude limit has been raised...

Last year at Balls I attempted a 3-stage 38mm flight, which I documented here (in the wrong forum). I decided to go for it again, this time with all Loki motors: It's mostly motor. I was astonished by the results from RASAero: This is for 10 mph crosswind at launch and 1 degree of...

I have been searching to no avail for the waiver cylinder radius and hope that someone else knows or can point me in the right direction. Or at least if not for 2023 what it has been in years past. Thanks in advance!

This is probably premature, but I want to get this out there to gauge interest and to think through some last design decisions. Background: I'm working on a 54mm-38mm 2 stage design for Balls this year that will be considered a Class 3 flight. Besides a bunch of documentation, one technical...

New Featherweight magnetic switches just arrived. They have the same form factor and mounting holes as the previous version, but the new electronics perform significantly better than previous versions: Longer range. A small (1/4" diameter, 3/4' long) rare-Earth magnet now activates the...

The RASAero webpage says that 1.02 supports a nested motor, and it shows a nice view of this with the MESOS rocket: but I haven't seen how to do this when I do my own modeling. Also, is it possible to model a sustainer with a tailcone nested inside a minimum-diameter booster? Here is a...

Although there are a number of minor bugs we're cleaning up and the automatic download of time series data is not available yet, I want to look ahead to the last major phone interface feature to be added, which is ground testing of deployment charges. For people who have used a remote ground...

Tomorrow looks like it's going to be a good flying day at the Pawnee National Grasslands where Northern Colorado Rocketry is hosting a launch with 20,000 AGL standing waiver and call-ins up to 35kft. Yesterday, thinking about what I should fly, I thought, maybe I should go for a 2-stager. I am...