So this past weekend I decided to fly my recently completed Madcow Nike-Apache. This is my first 2-stage HPR and it was a both fun and challenging.
While the flight did not go as panned, it still ended safely thanks to the electronics and myself being conservative when setting up the electronics in order to keep the flight safe.
Boost was on an AT H669N staging to an AT G138T with an expected altitude of 3100'. I wanted to keep it conservative, low, and with fast burn motors.
Booster electronics was a Missileworks RRC2L using the MOCS to fire the separation charge (0.5g of 3F BP acting on a cardboard piston plate with wadding). Main deploys at apogee since it wasn't going high at all.
Sustainer electronics was a Missileworks RRC3 in dual deploy mode with the AUX channel configured for OCS with a One-Shot timer with altitude comparator.
I was very tight on my timing to altitude for staging based on my sims as I wanted to be very conservative and very safe. The sustainer did not reach the comparator altitude, or it did not reach it in time before the one-shot timed out (have not looked at the data yet), so it locked out the AUX channel and fired the drogue and main since it did not reach the minimum safe dual deploy altitude.
Both booster and sustainer recovered without issue and I received a round of applause by the U of I Engineering students on the flight line. Kind of felt good getting an applause to be honest.......
Notice in the video what happened with the sustainer motor.
Already figured out what likely happened and have a fix ready for its next flight attempt at Mini Midwest power in a few weeks.
Some might call this a failure. I call it a complete success as everything worked as expected, even when it didn't work as planned.
While the flight did not go as panned, it still ended safely thanks to the electronics and myself being conservative when setting up the electronics in order to keep the flight safe.
Boost was on an AT H669N staging to an AT G138T with an expected altitude of 3100'. I wanted to keep it conservative, low, and with fast burn motors.
Booster electronics was a Missileworks RRC2L using the MOCS to fire the separation charge (0.5g of 3F BP acting on a cardboard piston plate with wadding). Main deploys at apogee since it wasn't going high at all.
Sustainer electronics was a Missileworks RRC3 in dual deploy mode with the AUX channel configured for OCS with a One-Shot timer with altitude comparator.
I was very tight on my timing to altitude for staging based on my sims as I wanted to be very conservative and very safe. The sustainer did not reach the comparator altitude, or it did not reach it in time before the one-shot timed out (have not looked at the data yet), so it locked out the AUX channel and fired the drogue and main since it did not reach the minimum safe dual deploy altitude.
Both booster and sustainer recovered without issue and I received a round of applause by the U of I Engineering students on the flight line. Kind of felt good getting an applause to be honest.......
Notice in the video what happened with the sustainer motor.
Already figured out what likely happened and have a fix ready for its next flight attempt at Mini Midwest power in a few weeks.
Some might call this a failure. I call it a complete success as everything worked as expected, even when it didn't work as planned.
