My Friend,
Do yourself a huge favor, do dual deploy after you get Level 2 certification. Do the minimum amount you can for the certification flights to limit your stress. Gong for high altitude, high velocity, and other complications are undue stresses you absolutely do not need. More stress often means more mistakes.
For your cert flights build and use simple rockets. L1 and L2 only require your rockets to only fly up and recover in a condition good enough to fly again. So adding anything beyond what is required is just adding that undue stress.
Once you get your L2, then you can go dual deploy, complicate as much as you wish, without the stress of certification. Then you can use high altitude, beyond the speed of sound engines. Doing dual deployment is required before you go for L3 but wait until you get your L2. Each step, there is more on the line, with greatly larger engines, bigger rockets, that are much more expensive to build and to fly. That is more than enough stress.
Something I have always struggled with is not over-thinking and not making it more complicated than it needs to be. I want to go as far and as high as I possibly can. But I know more than anything, my ego, keeping it in check and un-wounded, is more important than any speed or altitude. I used to teach high-school English, Wisdom is experience and knowledge and we are on our way to being wiser every day.
I am using one-use, ready-to-go engines, that I do not have to build for my first two certifications. In the long run, they are more expensive, but trying too hard and doing too much is mentally expensive, especially if there is a CATO.
I read this advice on the Apogee site and I know from other experiences in life, too much stress can kill any endeavor, as can over-confidence. You seem very bright and enthusiastic. I too want to go as far and high as possible and get there as quickly as possible. I initially was going to do L1 and L2 on the same day. Crazy thought to take the test for L2, before even getting my L1 cert.
I love will always love going cowboy and shooting first and then start asking questions. That is definitely not the best strategy, except in movies and a few video games; the odds are very not good.
The more you have to worry about, the more things in your checklist, the higher the chance that one will not work, especially since we both lack the gift of experience. The stress the rocket goes through in-flight and what can happen to the most carefully laid plans is enough to worry about. What we can control, is keeping it as simple as possible to eliminate our stress. Ultimately is it not control, what we need to succeed with high explosives shooting to the stars.
I remember the launch fever, ignoring the cold weather, that put the Challenger Space Shuttle into the air to kill all on-board and put the dreams of our nation in an awful flux. There were no engineering mistakes except the o-rings that could not function in the lowest temperatures ever launched in. If it was 70 degrees and sunny, no tragedy. It's a big difference between your ego and the lives and ego of NASA. But the point is the same. Don't let launch fever cause you any tragedies.
There will be plenty of time to test our boundaries and push the limits of what can be done, but testing is not the time to do that.
You are risking, not only your rocket but also your ego. Be good to yourself and keep it simple.
My long-term vision/goal is to go to the salt flats and launch a 20-foot long rocket to 45,000 ft above sea level to the edges of space and see the great expanse beyond on my in-flight cameras.
Someday, I want to go myself to space and touch the great beyond I have been dreaming about since the early 1970s, when I watched the original Star Trek on our little b&w TV in my pj's with my brother. A highlight was meeting Deforest Kelly, who played Doctor McCoy at a Science Fiction convention when we were vacationing in Las Vegas. I am still a huge Star Trek fan, seeing the visions of Gene Rodenberry as the best of what mankind can be, beyond greed, poverty, sex, gender, and all of the insane limits we face today. I would love to party with Captain Kirk but would prefer all the other captains leading me in outer space or anyplace other than a party.
I look forward beyond what today is, divide, hate, and a frankly a quite scary world; I believe these are growing pains. Awful as they are, the future is still something bright and exciting we need to live for.
Be good to yourself, since one thing you will always know, no matter what, you will always wake up with yourself no matter who else or what else is your world.
