1/12th Scale Proton-M - Plaster Blaster 2010

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That is a total bummer...don't know what happened With the Mad unless the metallic paint acted as a shield and it couldn't detect the Mag fields.

@sodmeister....totally had to read your screen name twice...:y:
 
SCOTTY!!!!...I mean......ROCKETMONKEY!!!!! Long-time, my friend.....

Yeah, it is a total bummer. That's two outta three now. I have the same feeling as I did with X-15 except this one was a bit more personal. The whole Proton idea was mine since my company is launching a satellite on a Proton. After mentioning the idea to Todd, it took off from there (literally). We did nearly all of the building, except the painting, in my garage. I was sort-of the Project Manager, although Paul, Larry, and Todd were also driving forces, as well as Jim M and Sparky.

In retrospect, we should have done a few things differently:

1) The swing-out fins seemed like a good idea at the time but swing-down fins (which were highly considered as well) have proven more effective on other rockets, such as Delta II. The failure of one of the fins to lock started us down the path of destruction.

2) We had two G-Wiz LCX'es in addition to the MAD. We had them both set for accelerometer apogee detect. This was the "recommended" setting by G-Wiz. However in hindsight, we should have set at least one of them for barometric mode. We might have gotten deployment at apogee then. It may have still been ugly at those speeds but we might have gotten the sustainer back.

3) We should have tested the booster separation with the chute and recovery gear installed. Someone mentioned that to us just before the flight but it was too late by then. His point was that the chute can actually act as a shock absorber for the charge. That, possibiliy combined with the forces of vertical flight, made the charge seem inadequate and left the booster attached at ignition of the sustainer. The sustainer motor then proceeded to fry our booster chute and harness, dooming the booster.

4) We don't know, and will probably never know, why the MAD didn't work. We tested it on a small rocket and it seemed to deploy although that rocket lost it's shock chord and the MAD came in hard. Maybe the G-switch got damaged and we probably should have double checked it again.

You would think that with triple-redundancy, something would have worked as planned. Todd and I have vowed to not launch a large rocket without a remote switch again.

Oh well. As Todd said, we got the lower part of the sustainer back with the "O H M" letters on it and I'm already scheming what to make from it. It shall be called the "OHM".

We will fly that next year......but not until I get my L3. That is my next project.....


Jim
 
Jimmy D....You Mad Cap, where you goin' with that OHM rocket?
Good to hear from you brother. Miss all you guys...bummed to hear about the rocket...there wasn't a glove hanging off of it was there?
 
Why does it always seem the up part is soooo good, and then.....

Sorry to hear/see what happened... but it always makes for great conversation later. Looked beautiful goin up....


Hey Todd, one of these days I'd like head down your way and help with a build...
 
Sorry to see what happened to such a beautiful rocket ,what a bloody shame.

The flight looked very impressive there for awhile.

Cheers

Paul
 
I just feel so bad to see what happend to your rocket.
The most exciting rocket on TRF crashes into the ground.

noooooo
 
Nice vid Jim & Michael! Thanx for sharing.

I'm hoping at some point in the future to see some big ol laundry hanging out there on the way down........
 
I'm looking at air starting a CTI 75mm L motor, either an L800 classic or an L820 skidmark.

The only time that I attempted to fly a motor in this case, the L995 red, the igniter that came with the reload burned but failed to ignite the propellant. I had to borrow somebody else's igniter to light it up.

I was wondering if you could detail your upper stage ignition setup that you used to air start the L1115, what igniter you used, how you ensured that it stayed in contact with the propellant during first stage boost, etc.

Thanks!
 
I'm looking at air starting a CTI 75mm L motor, either an L800 classic or an L820 skidmark.

The only time that I attempted to fly a motor in this case, the L995 red, the igniter that came with the reload burned but failed to ignite the propellant. I had to borrow somebody else's igniter to light it up.

I was wondering if you could detail your upper stage ignition setup that you used to air start the L1115, what igniter you used, how you ensured that it stayed in contact with the propellant during first stage boost, etc.

Thanks!

Hi Marsman-

The igniter for the upper stage was a pretty simple item. We had two dipped igniters (one was the stock igniter that came with the motor) taped to the supplied dowel with a BKNO3 pellet in there for good measure.
We got the pellet from a guy who makes them locally. We test fired the combo on the ground for testing and had great success with it lighting from the staging altimeter outputs.
 
Thanks for the reply. Were the igniters fired by the same channel, or did you use two channels and have one fire and then the second fire half a second later or something? Was the standard 9v adequate to fire them?

I was thinking about "painting" the inside of the upper grain core with pyrogen, and I like the idea of two redundant igniters.
 
The igniters were fired from two separate G-Wiz units each with separate batteries for unit power and for ignition power. No problem firing the e-matches.

If you use the BKNO3, there will be no need to paint the grains with pyrogen. The large ball of flame on our ground tests was pretty spectacular! Bright greenish white and LOTS of smoke!
 
It's just a question of finding the BKNO3, which is why I was thinking about doing by painting the pryrogen into the core as a substitute.

Were the G-Wiz units set to fire at the same time, or staggered?
 
You can also substitute thermite or even a peeled down black powder motor grain for the BKNO3...

The G-Wiz units fired at the same time since they were drawing juice from seperate batteries... I seem to remember that we had them set to fire about 1-2 seconds after burnout.
 
Don't feel bad. It's like Protons have some sort of curse in HPR.

protonzvezda.jpg


pic00.jpg


protoninflight.jpg


proton%20launcher%20small.jpg


proton04.jpg



Both were based on my most reliable rocket I've been flying for years and both crashed with different mechanical failures. It's like Roscosmos has some secret Soviet era copyright protection on the design :roll:

You certainly did a great paint job. I've just learned myself how much of a pain silver is on my GIRD-9.

Good luck with your future projects comrades!
 
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