El Tres - A Carbon COVID-19 Level 3 build.

[UPscaler]

Fast forward to last weekend. The North Texas Tripoli guys put on a really rad event. Eric/Ray etc all worked really hard and nailed down a waiver of 32k for us. We did have quite a bit of wind to contend with but there were lots of adventurous fliers ready to go. I left Austin at 2:20am on Saturday morning and arrived at the field by 6:20. I had chatted with Jim Jarvis (as mentioned, one of my TAPs) the day before and with the wind predictions, we figured the best time to go would be as soon as the waiver opened. I had originally planned to do my cert flight with the M2245 IMax but it was sim'ing closer to 35k. I ended up going with the M840 (first time building one of these, kind of stressful). It was sim'ing to 28k, under the waiver. I was racked and ready to go by 8am and was the second flight of the weekend. Man, that M840 is pretty cool. Nice 9-10s burn. The rocket flew straight, lofted into the wind a little but miraculously landed just 1000' feet from us and very close to the pad. At one point it was about 7000' down range too. I still haven't downloaded the computers but GPS data says apogee of 28,181', roughly Mach 1.65. All in all, a perfect flight with one (very annoying) hiccup. It appears I didn't get any video. I have a 30 sec clip of me starring into the lens, looking confused and punching buttons on my phone. My guess is I turned it on and then accidentally turned it off. Oh well, I still have the M2245 and I'll be sure to have it work for that flight. As soon as I get my computers downloaded and get some photos together from Harry, I'll add those here. Thanks for following along! And big thanks to my TAPs Jim Jarvis and Stu Barrett!

Now its time to dig deep into the VOS project with Jim.

I thought I arrived too early but was greeted with this.
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I look happy but all I was thinking about was "Did I glue those M840 grains together correctly?".
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The flight. Still can't get over how lucky that was with the recovery. The wind was absolutely ripping at some altitudes.
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Awesome flight and congrats!

Braden

 

[rfjustin]

Awesome flight and congrats!

Braden

What he said... congrats!

 

[JimJarvis50]

Well, it took a while but it was worth the wait. And Bryan's dad was able to be at the launch and help with the flight! I'm still not quite sure how the rocket landed as close to the pad as it did! It was great to be involved in this build and flight.

Jim