Project Diamondback

[qquake2k]

It was a short walk of less than a quarter mile to go get it. After I confirmed that there was no damage whatsoever... I did a little celebratory happy dance in the wheat field and fortunately no one got any pictures of that! Woo-hoo I am L3 certified. I would like to add some thank yous to Bob Yanecek and Jim Wilkerson (my TAP members), Hans Vogel for moral support and double-checking my pre-flight prep process, and to Ron Mason for the great flight photos.

Bret
TRA 11240 L3

Congratulations! Well deserved happy dance!

 

[sodmeister]

I would also like to say congratulations on a perfect flight of a great looking rocket !

Sincerely

Paul T

 

[wingman]

Was a great flight! Hope the video turned out, as I am pretty sure I captured a little bit of the "happy dance..."
Congratulations. It's been great watching the build, and being there for the successful launch and recovery.

 

[SteelyEyed]

Was a great flight! Hope the video turned out, as I am pretty sure I captured a little bit of the "happy dance..."
Congratulations. It's been great watching the build, and being there for the successful launch and recovery.

Hey Wingman,
Glad you enjoyed the build and the flight, I certainly enjoyed it too. For me, the experience on Saturday, was more a huge sense of relief than the thrill of succeeding. Given the fact that this project has been ongoing for 2+ years, and all the hours and hours of effort put into it (design, fabrication, assembly, testing, priming, sanding, painting, graphics, clear coat, etc.), coupled with the amout of money spent up to that point, the fear of major dissappointment was weighing on me. Right before the launch, my heart rate was about 40 bpm above my normal.

But, now that it's been a couple of days I've experienced a greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Overall, this project has been one of the best experiences I've had in this hobby I love so much...

BTW, the video that Hans took looks okay, given the distance from the pad and the amount he had to zoom in to see anything, then trying to keep it in frame as it speeds away, it's kind of shakey (no happy dance footage either). I don't have it transferred from the Sony memory chip to my computer yet. I still plan on posting it some time in the future.

Cheers,
Bret

 

[SteelyEyed]

I finally got the launch video downloaded from my camera. You will notice that CTI M1400 was a bit slow to ignite, but it finally did its thing...

[YOUTUBE]Pah0Az-Bqh4[/YOUTUBE]

 

[SteelyEyed]

And here's the recovery...

[YOUTUBE]WDjm9T6xOQ8[/YOUTUBE]

 

[crickcrick1]

Here's a series of pics showing launch prep and some liftoff action (Notes: We pre-burned the area around the pad to minimize the possibility of starting a grass fire. The trajectory was perfectly vertical, but the camera as tilted a bit).

Looking good so far...

Hey Bret, I was excited to see my shots made it into print. Now you need to show this thing off in a national publication.

 

[SteelyEyed]

Hey Bret, I was excited to see my shots made it into print. Now you need to show this thing off in a national publication.

Ron, thanks again for the excellent pics. They make the whole event more memorable and enjoyable for me. Now that I can purchase M motors I have a few more on order and am looking forward to flying it again soon. Maybe later this month at the next WAC launch, and I'm also going to try to make it to the OROC launch at Brothers, OR in October.

 

[SteelyEyed]

Today I finally got around to opening up the av-bay on this bird to get a read out from the flight logs of my RRC2-minis (from my L3 cert flight). Turns out there were a couple of surprises...

RocSim9 predicted a peak altitude of 9254 ft. My port side RRC2 recorded a peak altitude of 9377 ft. (no big surprise)

RS9 predicted time to apogee of 22 sec. The port side RRC2 recorded the time to apogee of 24 sec. (a mild surprise)

RS9 predicted a max velocity of 962 ft/sec (656 mph). The port RRC2 recorded a max velocity of 1160 ft/sec (791 mph - a bit of a surprise that it exceeded Mach)

The big surprise was that the starboard RRC2 gave bogus numbers of
65535 ft peak altitude
655350 ft/sec peak velocity
95 sec to apogee

I talked to the guy at Missile Works (I think his name is Jim) and he said he had never seen that particular behavior before.

Two questions:
1) Any thoughts regarding the fairly large difference in predicted and recorded peak velocity.

2) Anybody else have a similar experience with the Missile Works RRC2-mini giving clearly incorrect results?

 

[Eric1]

The port altimeter is bogus!!

Go with the numbers from starboard side and submit it as a record!!!!!!


Eric

 

[COrocket]

I would say that the port altimeter was slightly off on the velocity because i think it would be hard to be accurate when measuring pressure altitude changes over time to get velocity, compared to say, an accelerometer based altimeter. Especially as the rocket goes transonic.

As for the other altimeter... Maybe send it back for a new one.

 

[DAllen]

65535 ft peak altitude
655350 ft/sec peak velocity
95 sec to apogee

What are you talking about? Sounds legit to me. oint: :bangpan:

 

[SteelyEyed]

It was pointed out to me by a computer geek that I work with, that for a 16 bit system, the highest value it can display is (2^16)-1 which is 65535. Mystery partially solved...

I'm shipping it back to Missile Works tomorrow for diagnostics and repair.

 

[[POW]Eagle159]

What are you talking about? Sounds legit to me. oint: :bangpan:

Sounds like he got that from NASA :surprised:

 

[RocketSurgeon]

Extraordinary project Steely. Thanks for taking the time to share it...

 

[SteelyEyed]

It was pointed out to me by a computer geek that I work with, that for a 16 bit system, the highest value it can display is (2^16)-1 which is 65535. Mystery partially solved...

I'm shipping it back to Missile Works tomorrow for diagnostics and repair.

I received the following email note from Jim Amos at Missile Works:
__________________________________________________
The unit checks fine, however the anomally with your EEPROM has me baffled... it did indeed have the flight log memory totally re-initialized, but after a subsequent operation in the chamber, the EEPROM *magically* started reading correctly... I'm just going to swap this unit for a new one... I'm connvinced the internal EEPROM has issues as I interrogated externally and saw it flake with the before and after memory interrogation.

I'll have it shipping tomorrow for you.

J
__________________________________________________

I doesn't tell me what the failure mode was, but you gotta love his customer care though. He is shipping me a new one tomorrow. I will have it installed back in the av-bay and ready to fly again by next weekend. Thanks Jim!

 

[blackjack2564]

T

Two questions:
1) Any thoughts regarding the fairly large difference in predicted and recorded peak velocity.

2) Anybody else have a similar experience with the Missile Works RRC2-mini giving clearly incorrect results?

I have had similar results with peak velocity function. After talking to Jim :

It was added on as a function due to left over space[memory?] on the controller, it is not accurate in any way shape or form. Just something to play with.
I don't even bother with it anymore.

 

[SteelyEyed]

I have had similar results with peak velocity function. After talking to Jim :

It was added on as a function due to left over space[memory?] on the controller, it is not accurate in any way shape or form. Just something to play with.
I don't even bother with it anymore.

Oh chute, so you're tellin' me it really didn't break Mach 1. That takes a little of the luster off my cert...

Steely