Thursday, December 31, 2015

Test of Archetype Rocketry's Cable Cutter

I bought Archetype Rocketry's clever and compact Cable Cutter a couple of years ago because it enables dual-deploy from a single volume.  After struggling to find it all day I finally ran the following test tonight:

They recommend 0.1 ml of Pyrodex but all I have is black powder.  I could probably get away with 0.05 ml but, considering the parachute "burrito" will be outside the rocket when the cable cutter fires, I think I'll stick with 0.1 ml just to be sure.  I plan to fly a minimum diameter AT 1417K185 on Saturday using this system so wish me luck and [almost] Happy 2016!!

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Holtville Launch, December 2015

Here are the photos but I was having trouble with the GoPro and only caught three liftoff videos:

I was the first flight of the day for the first time with the CTI 260H194 Red Lightnin', helped Darrel with his perfect CTI 2771L990 Blue Streak flight, and socialized a bit.  The FAA just bumped our waiver from 10k to 15k so I need to get on that!  The only hitch is that we need to launch from the corner of the runway so that's quite a trek.  I could hear Paul Snow doing the remote countdown over the PA at the launch site and also on Darrel's phone about 1.5 seconds earlier.  We didn't specify which was the fire countdown so I was late on the button in the photos.  Also, when we got out there, my GoPro would not power on so I missed Darrel's epic liftoff.  Duh.