I had a strange problem from my flight over the weekend of my upscale Estes Skywinder and seeking help (as no response yet from Featherweight/Adrian) so I thought I'd see if others can shed light on this.
The altimeter was programmed for apogee deployment of drogue (helicopter blades in this case) and main at 800'AGL. When it reached Apogee, both main and apogee charges wrongly fired. I confirmed this both from the Raven datalog as well as the onboard video.
At apogee, the blade charge fired (Volts Pyro Main), pushing the piston forward to deploy the blades. At the same time, the barometric altitude goes haywire and it falsely fires the 2nd event about .1 seconds after the first event, instead of waiting to 800' (Volts Pyro Apogee). Here's the image from FIP. It's a bit hard to see but there is a +16G acceleration when the first charge goes followed by a -30G (I assume from when the blade release piston bottoms out). Did this shock cause the baro sensor to give a wrong altitude (-500 ft), causing it to fire main? About a second later the baro fully recovers and gives a normal altitude reading. Any suggestions on how best to program this to avoid such problems, add a delay as well?? I just used the default menu pulldowns for "At Apogee (baro)" and for "At Low Altitude" to program the events.
Event 1 (apogee) - programmed to "main" pyro channel output to fire at apogee (baro altitude descending)
Event 2 (800 AGL) - programmed to "apogee" pyro channel output to fire at 800AGL
Raven 3, April 29, 2012 firmware build
Any help appreciated!
-Glenn CB TRA 4172 L3
The altimeter was programmed for apogee deployment of drogue (helicopter blades in this case) and main at 800'AGL. When it reached Apogee, both main and apogee charges wrongly fired. I confirmed this both from the Raven datalog as well as the onboard video.
At apogee, the blade charge fired (Volts Pyro Main), pushing the piston forward to deploy the blades. At the same time, the barometric altitude goes haywire and it falsely fires the 2nd event about .1 seconds after the first event, instead of waiting to 800' (Volts Pyro Apogee). Here's the image from FIP. It's a bit hard to see but there is a +16G acceleration when the first charge goes followed by a -30G (I assume from when the blade release piston bottoms out). Did this shock cause the baro sensor to give a wrong altitude (-500 ft), causing it to fire main? About a second later the baro fully recovers and gives a normal altitude reading. Any suggestions on how best to program this to avoid such problems, add a delay as well?? I just used the default menu pulldowns for "At Apogee (baro)" and for "At Low Altitude" to program the events.
Event 1 (apogee) - programmed to "main" pyro channel output to fire at apogee (baro altitude descending)
Event 2 (800 AGL) - programmed to "apogee" pyro channel output to fire at 800AGL
Raven 3, April 29, 2012 firmware build
Any help appreciated!
-Glenn CB TRA 4172 L3