Fred, that is correct, I wasnt thinking about the fact that the rocket will be traveling at low speed (and in a less uniform speed) after drogue deploy, and nose cone vents will be fine. Just be sure to go with a G wiz, or similar unit. I would say, early deployment is not that much worse then late. And with MPR and small HPR it isnt going to damage anything unless it is really late. I have some rockets that seem to hang in mid air with a late delay. One flew on a small I motor to under 750', and I was worried about deployment but on higher altitude flights it didnt come down very fast before deployment. It actually seemed to come down without spinning, or going nose first for about 3 seconds. While Fred was correct, I was wrong about the dual deploy, I believe a MAD would be a much safer device with a motor failure. If the motor fails and the rocket starts heading towards the crowd, the timer may go off to late. With the MAD, if the rocket were to have a CATO and go near the crowd, most likely the chute would come out. Also, if the rocket shreded the chute would probably be ejected and shredded as well, but it is better to have a rocket under thrust flayling around with the harness out, then a fully stable "dart" under power. This saftey has been used on large rockets. A RC deployment system is added as a back-up saftey system. It can eject the main parachute in the case of an alt failure, or if something goes wrong on the up part, it can eject the chute and let the motor whip the rocket around the same area. Instead of it plowing into a SUV filled with young children.
While there was no way to prevent it, I have a real life event that shows how dangerous a high velocity part of a rocket is (compared to a fully ejected rocket under thrust). A large rocket launched on 4 L850W's shredded at around 500', a couple seconds after liftoff. As the centering ring failed, the rocket shreded into a thousand pieces (thrust of motors in tube was just to much). 2 motors stayed with the debris (large and falling slow, easy to get out of the way of) while one fell out in the field. The forth motor, as it burned out, plowed through a back window and through the front and embeded itself in the ground, after going throw a truck. Almost anyone could have walked out of the way of the large, slow falling parts of the rocket, but I was one car away when the rour of an L850 caught me off guard, and then some screams, yelling and a crash... no body was hurt, but if there was someone in that car... They wouldnt even know what hit them...
. If I can extract the motor mount and fins (I think this should be possible) from the remaining body tube, I will buy a new body tube and nose cone and get back into business. I have used a PerfectFlite microtimer in a 35mm film canister strapped to the shock cord when I fly the G61 ans G67 reloads. I thought the Intellicone might be a better solution. Thanks for any comments.
