We had a little contest at the launch today

[Michael L]

The contest was highest altitude on 60N-sec or less. I'm only a year and a half into the rocketry so I chose an Aspire and put a 55N-sec F42-8T. The other two rockets were 24mm motors with a nose cone Not really but they were small. I didn't like the tape the motor in method (I get it. It works but it's about aerodynamic as a brick :/ ) so I 3D printed a tapered sleeve, threads, and retainer. I put slots in the body of the sleeve for the fins. Fill the slots with 30m epoxy and add the fin. I changed the design from 4 fin to 3 fin. The rocket had a TeleMini in the coupling (it didn't fire the charges. I think the altimeter was bad). I got the Confirmation Beeps for pad and good continuity on both charges. Telemetry was garbled. That should have been a hint but it wasn't enough of a hint considering that I got good confirmation beeps (I cycled power 3 times and always got the confirmation beeps). The launch was great. Arrow straight. The sim said 4,700 (winner went to 5,900) and I don't doubt that it did it. Unfortunately the return was equally straight and fast.

Going up

Came down, really fast and very vertical, this is the best piece

Recovery

Not mid-power related but, on an up note, the LOC IV had a successful redundant dual deploy launch and recovery on an I350

 

[Michael L]

Keith Packard was able to retrieve data from the TeleMini but it'll never fly again. In his words "The other issue is that the board has been 'taco'ed' -- it's no longer planar. That means the internal traces have been stretched, and the fiberglass may have cracked. Because of that, I can't really recommend flying it again."

The Apogee Delay setting was @1000s. I never touch that setting but apparently that's where it was set. This was the second round of the same contest. The first rocket had a FTD (failure to deploy). I used the wrong igniters on the dual deploy charges. I managed to reuse quite a few parts from the rocket to make Aspire #2. It's return to earth was kinder for some reason. I found it (2 months later) like this. The fins were papered balsa. I put a much stronger fin on #2. #3 will fly with those fins.

The graph was very pretty The rocket almost made it to 4,800'. The acceleration spike at the end was stout.