Hello everyone.
This is my first post on this forum under my proper name, previously I posted on here under JBrocketman, though not very often. My name is Erica Bradley, and I am the TRAR prefect for Reno, an avid flier, and I'm slowly working towards my level three.
Currently I'm examining possible improvements on a rocket that I put up at XPRS 2016. It was designed to be my first mach rocket, and I was putting a lot of things about it on faith, but now I'd like to make some good modifications to it so that it's a better all around rocket, and might actually get past mach 1 this time.
In my only flight of this rocket so far, I got much more altitude than I had anticipated (7600') but only mach .9
On it's first flight, the motor chuffed several times, losing just that extra bit of impulse I needed. Turns out the Aerotech H268-R had trouble with the grains being too tight in the liner, I'll make sure to fix that next time. Check out the flight takeoff picture though! Courtesy of my wife.
So a few things I already plan on doing are:
Carve a boattail out of the aft fiberglass of the rocket to streamline the rear end, replace the kevlar strap with kevlar cord, change the style of the nosecone bulkhead to allow a GPS tracker inside of it, use a dremel to remove some of the extra fiberglass in the motor mount, and maybe shorten it a little more to remove more weight from the body.
I'm also thinking about removing the knurled section of the aft closure of my motor, and shortening the rear of the rocket even more, then making the boattail section remove even more weight and go all the way down to the diameter of the motor.
This was originally a hawk mountain Raptor kit which I've shortened by about a foot, made dual deploy (streamer and x form chute) and made a set screw retention system for the motor, instead of using an aft end retention.
When I have some time I will be adding more detailed pictures of the current state of the rocket, how it's put together now.
Does anyone know whether the Altus Metrum Easymini has an automatic mach delay? It's something I definitely should have checked ahead of time, but I haven't had much luck with the user manual in figuring it out. Another question for rocketeers better than I, with such short fins, is fin flutter a big enough risk that I should thicken my fillets to account for the possibility? I've never hit mach 1 with anything before, and I want to do it right.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments.
This is my first post on this forum under my proper name, previously I posted on here under JBrocketman, though not very often. My name is Erica Bradley, and I am the TRAR prefect for Reno, an avid flier, and I'm slowly working towards my level three.
Currently I'm examining possible improvements on a rocket that I put up at XPRS 2016. It was designed to be my first mach rocket, and I was putting a lot of things about it on faith, but now I'd like to make some good modifications to it so that it's a better all around rocket, and might actually get past mach 1 this time.
In my only flight of this rocket so far, I got much more altitude than I had anticipated (7600') but only mach .9
On it's first flight, the motor chuffed several times, losing just that extra bit of impulse I needed. Turns out the Aerotech H268-R had trouble with the grains being too tight in the liner, I'll make sure to fix that next time. Check out the flight takeoff picture though! Courtesy of my wife.
So a few things I already plan on doing are:
Carve a boattail out of the aft fiberglass of the rocket to streamline the rear end, replace the kevlar strap with kevlar cord, change the style of the nosecone bulkhead to allow a GPS tracker inside of it, use a dremel to remove some of the extra fiberglass in the motor mount, and maybe shorten it a little more to remove more weight from the body.
I'm also thinking about removing the knurled section of the aft closure of my motor, and shortening the rear of the rocket even more, then making the boattail section remove even more weight and go all the way down to the diameter of the motor.
This was originally a hawk mountain Raptor kit which I've shortened by about a foot, made dual deploy (streamer and x form chute) and made a set screw retention system for the motor, instead of using an aft end retention.
When I have some time I will be adding more detailed pictures of the current state of the rocket, how it's put together now.
Does anyone know whether the Altus Metrum Easymini has an automatic mach delay? It's something I definitely should have checked ahead of time, but I haven't had much luck with the user manual in figuring it out. Another question for rocketeers better than I, with such short fins, is fin flutter a big enough risk that I should thicken my fillets to account for the possibility? I've never hit mach 1 with anything before, and I want to do it right.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments.
