Airstart, newbie. Question about drag separation.

[jbrracer]

So, I'm a few weeks from an attempt at my first HPR airstart.

With that being said, I wondering if it makes sense to ready up the entire stack and launch without lighting the sustainer. I would use a dummy motor in the sustain to simulate close to flight condition. I thinking this is a good way to test my drag separation.

Setup is as follows.

Loc terrier booster 38mm
Loc tomahawk 38mm dual deploy with eggtimer proton to burn all the charges. Eggtimer mini in the NC to track the sustainer.

Thoughts and recommendations?

 

[boatgeek]

I am not an expert, but that is the approach I took to test separation and sustainer motor light programming. I hooked up a bare ematch to the sustainer channel and then checked reported data to make sure everything checked out. It also helped that a booster alone was fine at our local flying park, but adding a sustainer motor would have made it go too high for reliable recovery.

 

[jbrracer]

I am not an expert, but that is the approach I took to test separation and sustainer motor light programming. I hooked up a bare ematch to the sustainer channel and then checked reported data to make sure everything checked out. It also helped that a booster alone was fine at our local flying park, but adding a sustainer motor would have made it go too high for reliable recovery.

Thanks for the reply I didn’t even think to add just a bare match to check sustainer ignition. Thank you!

 

[Jee3300R]

You could also put a really small motor in the sustainer, like a D or an E, that won’t affect the flight much but will still make it almost as rewarding as a full two stage flight.

 

[Charles_McG]

I have flown several of my two stage sounding rockets as boosted darts. At least twice on purpose

I felt it was a conservative approach to learning HPR/electronic staging.

 

[blackjack2564]

I think u r on the right track...I do same for first test flights and also use bare match to verify my settings.