Holtville Havoc 2022

Holtville Havoc 2022 featured one of the finest flying days I can recall at this launch site.  I also finally flew my highest thrust motor yet, the CTI 86434M6400 Vmax (1,626 lbf max), and what a fine beast it was...

...with a 13ft 4in flame!

I had always sort of remained in awe of this particular motor.  There are many punchier motors in production, or otherwise bespoke, but this is the highest thrust commercial motor I'm aware of certified for use in CA; at least is was before Vmax propellant was discontinued.  :(  I had built the motor awhile back then realized it wouldn't seem to fit in my Aerotech hardware.  So then, about a year later, I purchased a CTI Pro98/4G motor hardware set and solved that particular problem.  

    I was a bit out of practice, since I have't flown many rockets in the last couple of years, but everything seemed to come together.  Except of course that I had lost my CD3 ejection system on my Mega Cowabunga flight at Lucerne.  Luckily I had another set purchased from Kenny Harkema so I would have at least one CD3 for main ejection.  I've covered flights with this rocket in previous entries so I'll refer you to older blog posts if you'd like to understand those details.

    I'd elected to use the CTI supplied igniter which was quite old and failed to ignite the motor on the first try.  Paul Snow kindly supplied one of his igniters for my second attempt.  Russ Sands also kindly offered to drive me out to the far pad to reinstall this igniter greatly accelerating recycle time; there are many kind folks in this hobby.  :)

    On this second launch attempt there was a delay for several seconds then the motor roared to life lofting the 50.4lb rocket skyward.  Honestly the ascent struck me as about as fast as any other rocket I remember seeing that day.  I also recall that there was some erosive burning of propellant, despite the grain bonding, and there was a loud pop near motor burnout.  Cool.

    The drogue charge popped just about at apogee but the resultant force was greater than I'd anticipated; oh well "blow it apart or blow it up".  The excessive, resultant force caused the weighted nosecone to pop off at apogee as well and the main chute tangled up.  Grrr...

    Jim Deveau, the club's newest TAP member, also kindly offered to help me retrieve the rocket in his dune buggy; again kindness knows no bounds in the San Diego club.  My CTI tracker led us right to the landing site.  The descent was slower than it could have been, considering the 'chute foul, but the vessel still impacted the ground pretty hard.  Despite the relatively hard impact the rocket seems quite easily reparable to me.

    According to the average of my Raven 3&4 altimeters the rocket achieved 7,310' altitude, after accelerating to ~44Gs, and maxing out at 631MPH.

    Thanks to Mark Treseder for capturing the vast majority of photos with my camera!  And thanks again to all the kind rocketeers who assisted me this weekend.

I have a few more photos scattered about so I'll add those soon.  Oh and here's the altimeter data if you'd like to take a peek.

Raven3/4 data - graph | motor | tabular:

  

P.S.  Here are photos of a) the motor hardware and reload and 2) the largely intact components after a fouled recovery... minor repairs imminent.: