eggplant
L3 | NAR 93664, TRA 17791
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2011
- Messages
- 1,853
- Reaction score
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I recently had the opportunity to bring a project with me to the Friends of Amateur Rocketry launch site near Los Angeles. Both because FAR is great for high-performance projects, and because the rocket had to be shipped across the country, I chose to do a compact, high performance build. I had no way to transport a custom motor to the launch, so I decided to get a second use on the AT 75/5120 case I originally used for my L3. Using this hardware also put the rocket into a performance envelope that I have not explored outside of a team setting and I hoped to use this flight to prove out ideas about high altitude recovery, fin can construction, and tracking.
All of the subsystems worked, and the rocket reached 21,000 ft and Mach 1.9 and recovered successfully. This was my personal record for altitude and velocity, which I hope will serve as a proof of concept and stepping stone towards higher performance projects in the future. This video includes both flight footage and pictures from construction. I might type up a couple of more detailed posts about what I learned along the way. Alternatively, if you are curious about the build, feel free to ask for more details on how/why I did something in this thread.
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