- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
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Lucy the Rocket Dog provides background vocals (windows not as open, so she didn't jump out of the car today!) Launch was noon on Wednesday, so the sirens you hear in the background are not the police coming to arrest me, but the testing of the Tornado Warning system.
continuing to play with relatively long gap staging. I now feel like I can say I can routinely gap stage up to 14 inches. Maybe I am cheating a bit, as I use an A8-3 upper stage motor that has a bigger nozzle, but I may try this with a B6-4 upper stage next time. The SECOND challenge with long gap black powder staging (after getting upper stage to IGNITE!) is recovering the booster. Long booster segments don't readily recovery by tumble-recovery, as the long booster tends to still be stable and come in nose first (see next scratch post, the Shrike-Kestral.) Part of fun of scratch building is developing and then mixing techniques, so I went back to Horizontal Spin again. You will see what I call a "water wheel" fin can on the booster here, the "windows" are placed close to the ring fin supports. After separation, the falling booster aerodynamics create a net "spin" force around the central long axis. It is supposed to make the rocket fall horizontal. On this launch, it didn't quite get to horizontal, but it was enough to make the rocket fall partially TAIL first, I am guessing it was about the same amount of drag as I would get with a tumble recovery. Anyway, recovered both booster and sustainer successfully, so another one has "earned its paint."
continuing to play with relatively long gap staging. I now feel like I can say I can routinely gap stage up to 14 inches. Maybe I am cheating a bit, as I use an A8-3 upper stage motor that has a bigger nozzle, but I may try this with a B6-4 upper stage next time. The SECOND challenge with long gap black powder staging (after getting upper stage to IGNITE!) is recovering the booster. Long booster segments don't readily recovery by tumble-recovery, as the long booster tends to still be stable and come in nose first (see next scratch post, the Shrike-Kestral.) Part of fun of scratch building is developing and then mixing techniques, so I went back to Horizontal Spin again. You will see what I call a "water wheel" fin can on the booster here, the "windows" are placed close to the ring fin supports. After separation, the falling booster aerodynamics create a net "spin" force around the central long axis. It is supposed to make the rocket fall horizontal. On this launch, it didn't quite get to horizontal, but it was enough to make the rocket fall partially TAIL first, I am guessing it was about the same amount of drag as I would get with a tumble recovery. Anyway, recovered both booster and sustainer successfully, so another one has "earned its paint."
