Updated: "Level 3 First Try!!" PDF

Hello, all, and happy holidays to you and yours.  In 2011 I had authored "Level 3 First Try" as an introduction to my TAP style and recommendations.  Just today I realized it needed some updating so here's v1g (updated Nov. 2015):

      L3-First-Try-v1g.pdf

Thanks for reading and cheers to burning vast quantities of AP in the new year accompanied by much rejoicing!

Our first Holtville launch... 16x slower

I'm slow.  Only recently did I figure out that the GoPro Hero3+ I've had for a year features a 240 fps mode.  If I slow that down another 50% during editing I'm now showing hawt akshun at an effective 480 fps! Perfect for rocket liftoffs at our new launch site at Holtville Airport right?  [Watch on YouTube in full-screen, 720p with the audio cranked up for best results]:

My LOC Bullet finally bit the bullet with an old AT J420 Redline motor. Unlike a fine wine... Redline motors age the worst of any propellant I've yet encountered.  This failure was similar to an AT I366 Redline failure I experienced a couple of years back yet... only yesterday did I figure out that, upon ignition, the delay begins burning but the propellant takes several seconds to pressure up (even if one scuffs up the grain surfaces vigorously).  So, once it does lift off, there's little delay left and the ejection charge fires near Max Q thus shredding your recovery system, destroying your Comm-Spec tracker, and inexplicably hurling your nose cone several hundred feed away (despite a perfectly straight ascent).  Russ Sands spotted it right away yet I must have been in denial.  Yes I did find it positioned precisely as pictured:

I also flew my DarkStar Lite on a slightly less old AT H128 White Lightnin'. It's interesting to draw attention to the fluctuating thrust on the video.  Our new launch site is an extra half hour from my house but it's a cool, retired airport.  The concrete runways occupy only a small percentage of the land area on the site yet my DS Lite managed to miss the soft dirt by that much:

The motor retainer cap dented but still works fine... ahhhhhh, probability. I hope to fly an M6400 at the new site soon and really break 'er in!  Sound carries very efficiently there so ear plugs might be in order for the audibly sensitive.

ROCStock launch, Lucerne, November 2014

It was another beautiful day of essentially windless flying at Lucerne on November 8th.  I was mainly there to witness Scott Yeatons' Level 3 attempt but wanted to fly at least one rocket as well.  I've had this AT 2406K650 Blue Thunder sitting in my closet for awhile now but only my trusty Em-Sem-Fity 98mm minimum diameter vessel seems compatible.  This "coffee can" motor shot is probably as close as my blog will ever get to rocket porn:

Second time was a charm and Em-Sem-Fity flew well on the "Kay-Sikz-Fity" despite the first igniter burning yet somehow failing to ignite the motor; that never ceases to amaze me:

Here's the Raven 2 graph (click image for enlarged version):

 

[Tabular data here] Peaks... V: 548MPH  A: 10.4G  Baro Alt, AGL: 6,113 ft.  It was a clean flight that, shocker, landed about a mile away 'cause that's how I roll:

I  must also commend Scott Yeaton for a picture-perfect level 3 prep, flight, and recovery on a CTI 5506M1230 Imax:

Thanks also to Scott's other TAP, Kurt Gugisberg, because he rocks and I very much enjoy working alongside him.  Yay, another great launch!

Laster Blaster 2014

It's time to catch up on some blogging.  In my defense I've been moving more toward Agile or Lean Test development at work and both methods value "functional [stuff] vs. documenting [stuff]."  So I'm valuing flying rockets more than documenting them but I still need to complete the documentation portion some day.

Sadly our last launch at the Plaster City site was on November 2, 2014.  The FAA claims that we never should have been allowed to fly at that site yet they managed to make that mistake for a decade.  I'm not buying it but that's my uninformed-conspiracy-theory opinion.

In any event I did have two quick, fun flights to mark the occasion.  I flew my Aerotech Arreaux on a CTI 56F120 Vmax.  I'm sure it seems like sacrilege to fly one vendor's motor in another's famous rocket design but the Arreaux is the only rocket I had that was light enough with a 29mm mount.  For some reason the F120 chuffed a couple of times and then slowly ascended.  Luckily I had shortened the delay to like 5 seconds or something so I got it back safely.  I also flew my DarkStar Lite on a CTI 168H410 Vmax for the second neck-snapping flight and it was just as fun as the first.  I realize this picture is boring but it does sort of prove that I was there... kind of like the moon landing photos:

[I have no doubts that we visited the moon by the way and was merely prodding those conspiracy theorists]
With that we bid you adieu, Plaster City, and look forward to our new site at the now retired Holtville Airport east of El Centro.

Updated: Der Red Mix mark II Skidfest at ROCTober 2014

After talking it up for over a year I finally flew my scratch-built Der Red Mix mark II on a full complement of seven burly Skidmark motors (as always switching to 720p in full-screen mode is the shit):

A formidable liftoff featuring loud, flaming titanium granules:

And notably angled ascent:

I arrived at the lake bed later than I'd have preferred but the conditions were perfect all day with light, intermittent wind and perfectly clear skies.  I had prepped all the electronics two months ago so I only needed to load up the seven Skidmark motors, set up the CD3 ejection system, mount the Flip Mino camera inside, and button everything up.  Upon checking in with the RSO he seemed confident in my design and flight plan but cautioned that the far pads were angled away from the spectators.  He specifically asked me not to adjust the rail to a more vertical orientation (and that's some foreshadowing).  Kurt Gugisberg was out at the pads and helped me to get the 30.5 pound rocket loaded up on the rail.  I powered up the two Ravens, installed the air-start igniters, started the Flip camera, closed the electronics bay door, installed the central motor ignitor, and was ready to go.
     The ignition of the central CTI 2010K675 was instantaneous as expected and, at a 7.3:1 thrust-to-weight ratio, the ascent was expeditious.  Now normally I would have set the launch angle at 1-2 degrees from vertical because this rocket is incredibly stable and there was no wind.  Instead the angle I was asked not to change was closer to 4-5 degrees from vertical so the angle you see it the picture above is real.  The one second air-start gaps I programmed into the altimeters seemed a bit long but the sequential pairs of 543I297, 258H180, and 176H123 Skidmarks otherwise popped as expected.  By the time the H123 pair fired the rocket appeared to be approaching a horizontal flight path but, in reviewing the onboard video above, that was mostly an optical illusion.  From the ground it also appeared that the ejection was 3-4 seconds too late but the video once again proves that wrong and the 'chute popped right at apogee.  Unfortunately the initial launch angle essentially lobbed the rocket on an arc rather than straight up so that extra velocity at apogee served to zipper the top of my rocket rather severely.  I can repair it but, from now on, I'm trusting myself to set the optimal launch angle. Once again DRMII stuck the landing:

Here's the zipper damage from the energetic ejection (Grrr...):

And here's the interesting thrust curve showing acceleration surges from the four motor phases in red on the left of the graph:


The altitudes from the Raven 2 (tabular, graph) and Raven 3 (tabular, graph) only differ by 10 feet (!) and average to 4,483 feet above ground level.
     So I'll repair the damage, shorten the air-start delays to 0.1-0.5 seconds, and fly DRMII again soon with a K815 Skidmark in the center. I'm not yet sure of the outboard motors but they'll likely max out the motor tube lengths.  Thanks for reading!

Addendum: I found more shots of this flight on David Reese's Flickr photo stream:
Thanks again, David!!

Back in it on the Lucerne tip

I'm sad to report that I hadn't burned a single molecule of ammonium perchlorate since November 2013.  Many factors including the FAA arbitrarily denying the SD club's waiver renewal (after 10 year of continuous good will), the struggle to find a new launch site, excessive heat, and Saturday timing issues forced my protracted break.  I finally attended Lucerne's September launch and lobbed two sport flights into the blue:

2.5" Madcow Nike Smoke on CTI 286H100 Imax


Dark Star Lite on CTI 93G80 Skidmark

No you're not passing out after viewing that second shot...  I just wanted to share that, after 14 year of rigorous photographic training, I remain focus-challenged.  :)

Quadcopter amazingness

With the cancellation of the Lucerne launch due to water on the lakebed I just realized I haven't flown since Plaster Blaster in November '13!!  That's a bummer, man.  I'm not slacking, however, and just took receipt of an amazing DJI Phantom I RC quadcopter with GoPro Hero camera mount:

I flew it in my local park yesterday and, despite my lack of RC experience, I don't think I did too badly although this is designed to fly very easily (watch in full-screen, 1080p HD and stoke out!): I'll definitely be shooting liftoffs from above with that combination if only I could find a high-power rocket launch...

Unmitigated viciousness...

I couldn't help maself.

Welcome to 2014!!

I tried to employ a bit programming fun and entitle this entry "Welcome to 2013++" but the increment operator is apparently not blogger-friendly so there it is in quotes.
     I want to provide a quick launch update as things have been/are getting kinda weird hence the sparse blogging on my part:

• December Plaster City was blown out on Saturday for the first time in a year.
• After a decade of flying at Plaster City we lost our FAA waiver for that chunk of land on January 1 due to reevaluation of the airspace.  The club is working with the FAA to identify a new site but, until that time, it's model rockets only at least for Jan/Feb so I'm planning to attend Lucerne only in the interim.
• I'm hoping to attend Lucerne on 1/11 but a post-work conflict might prevent that.  
• Grrrrr...
• So February in Lucerne then?

Thanks again to my loyal readership and cheers to an amazing 2014!

Leveraging RC electronics for active vertical stabilization

I just found this on Rocketry Forum and this budding rocket scientist, Alyssa Stenberg, has become my new heroine!

At some point in the last decade I'm certain I read that active guidance was disallowed for hobby/high-power rocketry.  I cannot find that/those rule(s) now, at least for Tripoli, so perhaps the prohibition has been lifted?  I just skimmed my Tripoli rules from 2001 and could only find in the Prohibited Activities section: "The use of a high power rocket or high power rocket motor as a weapon against a target."
     In any event I've never understood why the rule [I thought I read] seemed to categorically disallow active guidance.  I realize such steering could be used by malefactors for bad things but Alyssa's 2D active guidance is clearly intended to improve the safety of the flight. I hope her work and excellent presentation open the door to additional research to actively maintain flight perpendicular to Earth. Bonus: This Guardian controller from Eagle Tree Systems is only $75. One needs to buy a slew of other hardware and electronics to enable such a system but that seems cheap for such a controller.
     After watching Alyssa's presentation several things occurred to me:

1. When set to 3D mode and using one servo per fin one could also actively counter roll in addition to pitch and yaw.
2. It might prove worthwhile to enable some sort of inhibition system to prevent post-apogee servo thrash unless...
3. Leaving it active could reduce drift by actively steering the rocket against the wind under parachute.  I think one might need to invert the servo responses post-apogee, however, depending on the fin/gimbal/recovery configuration.

Rawkit syence is good eats!