Gotta pay attention to those details!

[OG1959]

This is what happens when you forget to remove the temporary piece of tape you had on your first stage so you could do a quick spin for balance test.

Which then somehow resulted in this.

 

[OG1959]

So after some investigation, here's my explanation.

The lower stage engine ejected BUT the extra piece of temporary tape held the lower stage in place. The upper stage engine simply burned away the paper tube and it then fell off. Upon further investigation I found that I had left ANOTHER piece of temporary tape holding the nose cone to the main body!

You see, when I was doing my spin test the nose cone wanted to fall off due to the extra weight of having the altimeter in the payload bay. So I put a TEMPORARY (yeah not so much) piece of tape on it to hold it to the body tube.

Just really lame amateur mistakes!! Excited to launch and not paying attention!!

WILL NOT be making that mistake again. MUST get into doing a pre-flight checklist for ALL of my rockets.
First step, write up that list and tape to the inside lid of my field box.

SAFETY FIRST!!

 

[BABAR]

First, you aren’t the first.

second, I found some pink masking tape online pretty cheap. when I am launching a bunch of rockets, i prepack them at home and i use the pink tape ONLY for holding the nose cones on, and I leave an obvious folded back “tag” so HOPEFULLY it is really obvious when I take it out to the pad so I remember to remove it before launch. Yes, this is the poor man‘s “remove before flight” flag. So far (and I am not going to push it) it has worked well for me. The pink color is just because it is more likely to catch my attention, the Manila masking tape I tried and missed.

 

[David Schwantz]

Will the tape you use to tape the check list in place be temporary??

 

[David Schwantz]

Sorry. You had to see that one coming.

 

[BABAR]

Will the tape you use to tape the check list in place be temporary??

Only if it’s pink.

 

[OG1959]

This really bugs me because I'm usually really careful with things that can hurt me and others. I dunno... maybe it's age, (CRS) the heat of the day, being excited to launch... regardless, I need to slow down and be more aware of what I'm doing both building and launching.

 

[Donnager]

I do post-it checklists. Still a work in progress.

 

[boomtube-mk2]

Folks; It's "Pink Slip" and "Red Tape".

Any Idiot should know that, I certainly do . . . hey, wait a minute.