Not today, but Saturday was the monthly launch. I flew my first composite motor but maybe I should not have. It was my Estes Vapor and I flew it on an Estes E30-4 that I bought from AC Supply. Being the first time I did not know that these motors don't come with ignitors so it almost got scratched right then but then somebody offered an ignitor they had. The ignitor did not slide all the way up like I had read about composite motors. The experts decided it's an "end-burner" ( I think that is what they called it) so I put it on the pad and tried a launch. We saw the ignitor go off but it did not start the motor. So off the pad it went and back to the truck. I switched over the chute release to my IQSY Tomahawk when another person came up with another ignitor to try in the E30. It fit in the motor much better (the other one was loose) so I switched the chute release back over and gave it another try. This time it fired and we had a launch. It was very fast and got some great altitude. We saw it arc over and straighten out to come straight down to impact the ground nose first. The first 5 inches or so of the body tube was collapsed, broken and bent . The weird thing is that I saw the nose cone had not come off during it's trip back down but when I retrieved it the nose cone was off, the chute was barely sticking out, but the chute release was outside the body tube and it had released. I just can't figure out how the chute release found it's way out of the body tube without the chute also coming out...
I think the problem with the deployment was the rocket was still moving to fast when the ejection charge fired for the chute to deploy. I simmed it when I got home and Open Rocket showed the speed at deployment to be around 89, what is it, feet per second. Having a bad memory sucks... I normally sim every possible rocket motor combo before I launch but this one must have slipped thru. Like I wrote, sucks to have a bad memory. I have two more of those motors and I wonder what they are good for with the 4 second delay. Maybe something heavier than the Vapor I guess. Anyway, the Vapor has been rebuilt once already. Not sure if it should rise again
I also launched my IQSY Tomahawk (bashed from a Star Orbiter kit) on an Estes F15-6. It's only been launched once before on a D12-4 (with an adaptor). It was a nice straight launch with good altitude. We saw something happen at apogee that we thought was the cone coming off and chute coming out but as the rocket continued to descend we could see two "parts" coming down that were getting further apart. As they got closer we could see the body of the rocket was one piece and the nose cone/chute was the other. The chute release worked but the chute took a little time to open which was good as it landed close. Upon recovery we could see the shock cord had burned thru. I built a baffle into this rocket with a screw eye. There is about a foot of Kevlar attached to the screw eye and I attached 1/4 elastic to the other end going to the nose cone/chute. The baffle design is two plates built into the coupler. I think a hot particle must have found it's way thru to burn thru the elastic. The burn mark was very concentrated. Anyway, no damage to the airframe. I just need to replaced the shock cord and she'll fly again. This was the first rocket I built when I got back in the hobby. I think I'll use some wadding on future flights and all future baffles will be a different type of design...
-Bob
