I attained my L3 cert on 8/9/08 and was promoted to L3 TAP on 6/22/11. Let me know how I can help you achieve your level 3 on the very first try! Glad to serve. :)
On the left Megan's kindly rebuilding my Madcow 4" Nike Smoke. Middle is my DarkStar "Heavy Duty" motor tube assembly. Right is the booster tube for my upcoming 2000MPH president's challenge on a CTI M3100. That is, by far, the best carbon fiber layup I've done yet. Megan helped a great deal but I also laid the shrink tape up without seams, used a heat gun to squeeze out the excess resin, and then allowed it cure at room temperature overnight. I still need to post-cure in my oven but this thing's gonna look good!:
Here's a full-size detail shot. Use the zoom and pan tools for best results.
Catching up... For once I'd planned realistically and took only one complex flight with me on that day. This would be my first five-motor clustered air start in Der Red Mix II. I fired a CTI 1874K740 C*Star on the ground, then 2-sec delay, then 2 x 282H399 White Thunder, then 2-sec delay, then 2 x 150G50 Imax. Let's jump into the Flip MinoHD onboard vid and then I'll provide details. As always, and for maximum thrill, you should watch on YouTube in 720p, full-screen:
From the ground Rob Greenlaw and I could clearly see the flash/pop of the H399 dipped igniters before the motors actually ignited.
I spent several hours prepping the Raven and Parrot 2 altimeters, e-matches, and recovery system the night before so that made somewhat quick work of the final prep the next morning:
Here I've laid out my casings and associated reloads:
I'd like to take a moment and thank Cesaroni for inventing grain spacers. It's that sort of competition that really benefits consumers and we appreciate it! Thanks also to Rob for shooting the following pre-flight sequence:
The liftoff on the K740 C*Star was spectacular as always. These motors burn so brightly that it's nearly impossible to capture mach diamonds but I was able to drastically underexpose and post-process to prove their existence:
I was most pleased when the rocket stuck the landing yet didn't crack a fin. I upgraded from a 10' to 12' 'chute this time but that's still almost not large enough for those dangling fins:
Here's the very interesting Raven flight graph. Note the three thrust traces on the acceleration curve and their relative contributions to the velocity spikes (click the image for a larger version):
Here's the tabular data from the Raven if you're interested. And the obligatory recovery shots. Thanks again, Rob!
Next I plan to fly a fully-loaded, all-Skidmark cluster: K675, 1-sec, 2 x I297, 1-sec, 2 x H180, 1-sec, 2 x H123. I'm not sure when but I already bought the motors so... yay. It might even be painted and have decals by then? I bought a 3M full-face respirator with isocyanate/pesticide absorbent canisters so hopefully my nervous system will remain intact.
I've really got to post these entries right after the launch. Otherwise these protracted delays result. Ugh. I decided to keep it simple that day and fly motor ejection only.
I captured two onboard video segments: Super Raven on CTI 867J244 White and DarkStar Lite on CTI 298H159 Green3 propellant:
I was surprised at how punchy that little J was and, as you saw, the Super Raven ejection popped 3-4 seconds too early. It still attained 3,188' according to the awesome and simple Altimeter One. Here's liftoff and uneventful recovery:
Second up was my well-worn DarkStar Lite one the Pro29 6G green reload. I like the mach diamonds and vapor eddies. I also tried to include a photo of the altimeter's LCD screen showing 3,912' but it's hard to see at that angle:
Finally I flew my Madcow Squat on the Pro54 1G 465I150 Imax. The up part was fun but I still managed to crack a fin fillet on landing. Those are some thick fillets too so... hmmm:
Still to come are my Der Red Mix five motor flight at Lucerne in January and a single sport flight at Plaster City in March.
I still owe two launch reports from January but did not fly in February (I've been traveling). In the interim I wanted to preview what I'm hoping to fly at BALLS 21 this September:
That Frenzy Massive kit is 10.5' tall (3.23m for those down unda) once constructed and you see the Pro98 6GXL casing will barely fit the length of the main tube! (for reference I'm 6'2", 1.88m). I'm considering one of three CTI reloads:
I'm way behind in my blog posts but wanted to note that all my previous whining about wind was offset by two brilliantly wind-free Saturdays at Plaster City and Lucerne, respectively. Video, photos, and data are on the way soon. Mother Nature and I are BFFs again. Keep up the great work, MoNa!
Despite the cold morning it was sunny and clear most of the day with essentially zero wind. Every once in awhile Madre Nature gives back. For awhile now I've been wanting to fly the AT 486I59 Warp9 8-second end-burner with a cored White Lightning kicker on the nozzle end:
Per the instructions I used some Gorilla Glue to bond the end-burning grain place and then liberally coated the liner with grease to [hopefully] minimize casing damage. This was also the first time I'd tried the new Featherweight Altimeters magnetic switch armed externally using only a rare earth magnet:
Yeah the wires are long but I wanted to be able to swap the switch around to other electronics bays as necessary. I didn't capture any video or pictures of the liftoff but it kinda sucked. The initial kick wasn't as great as I'd calculated and my .38 Spatial immediately headed north after leaving the end of the rail. It arc'd out toward the mountain range and the only way I knew the main ejection had kicked was that my Comm-Spec transmitter signal shot up about when I'd expected based on the visual trajectory. From the following flight graph you can see that I still managed to attain ~2,200' of altitude and, based on the post-main slope of the altitude curve, the descent on the 12" 'chute was probably too fast at about 55fps/32MPH:
I say probably because this rocket is a tank and I found it completely intact well over 1.5 miles north. You can just see a thin, horizontal line of cars to the right of the hanging smoke trail if you click the image below:
This was, by far, the longest I've walked north at Lucerne and, for reference, I shot another photo of the power lines near the base of the huge mountain from that position:
My cellphone has a pretty wide angle lens but you still get the idea. I was about 80% of the way up the illuvial fan and I'm glad I didn't get caught in the power lines! Unfortunately the greased liner didn't protect my awesome 38/480 Dr. Rocket Millennium edition casing and the anodizing's partially burned now:
I'm sad but I've flown probably 10 reloads in there and it appears structurally sound (no bubbling).
I'll reiterate that I'm a very slow on rocket prep and recovery so I only had time for one more flight as the awesome ROC volunteers were talking of tearing the range down. Rob Greenlaw was parked next to me and he agreed to a drag race with our fiberglass 4" Nike Smokes on CTI 1408K2045 Vmax motors. I'll forego my typical drag race suspense and simply tell you that Rob won:
Good for Rob and I've already requested a rematch!
Near the end of this year's Plaster Blaster event Sparky, president of DART rocketry in SD, asked me to check out a rocket he'd found years ago and was trying to identify. My jaw dropped when I realized he'd found my long-lost minimum diameter 38mm design!
I'd flown/lost it at Plaster City on a CTI 512I285 classic motor. This flight predated my obsession with radio tracking as an invaluable insurance policy but I was out there with "Eagle Eyes" LL so what could go wrong? Well both of us lost site of it after burnout and, despite scouring the area for over an hour, were unable to find it and gave up. I'm not sure exactly who found it but Mike returned it completely intact including my long-lost Pro38 4G casing. So thanks again and props to Mr. Jerauld!
Lesson learned: I should travel back in time and include a radio tracker before the flight.
Google just redesigned the profile page for Blogger.com and it now clarifies that the 'page' views I've been tracking are actually profile views. So that counter in the lower right of this page is correct. Thanks for reading, peeps!
After posting two foreshadowing images below I'm finally getting around to documenting our nifty drag race three weeks ago. I had trouble editing the Flip Slide video in Final Cut Pro 7.03 for some reason so I threw this together in Final Cut Pro X:
[I'm not really a huge fan of that software yet as it seems to be half way between iMovie and v7.03 in capability.] Three of us flew the CTI 7521M840 and Mark Clauson chose the AT M650. A HUGE thanks to Joyce Chan who skillfully photographed our drag race and was kind enough to share her source files with me. Please head over to her site for larger versions or to buy prints of these or any of her other awesome shots: http://fotos.nahcpj.com/
L-to-R: Art/Tom Just, Frank Hermes, yours truly, Mark Clauson
Mark smoked us all with his minimum diameter L3 vessel on the M650!
I was second off the pad, then Art, then Frank. I honestly thought we M840 flyers would have had an ignition advantage because there's a 29mm propellant grain with an embedded pyrodex pellet at the top of the core. That plus the insane 459 pounds of initial thrust has me scratching my head. Perhaps Mark was using a special igniter but, whatever the reason, he won the liftoff cleanly.
I again used my Beeline GPS module to track the rocket as it was well out of site. I threw in the beacon as backup and thought I'd need if as my Yaesu radio didn't receive any distance data until about 20 seconds before the rocket landed. Not sure what's up with that but, in the end, the Beeline did the job and the Google Earth data was robust as shown in the post below.
As a fun aside we all kicked in $20 and employed a scoring equation including liftoff rank, peak altitude, and distance from the pad (highest score takes all):
Mark won with the highest overall score so congrats again! While Frank didn't win this year he was the only participant to incur zero damage after a clean recovery. Mark hit a power line on the way down and burned a 1/2" hole through the airframe and aft motor closure. Art's 1/4" Kevlar shock cord snapped but he got all the parts back. Mine suffered a hard impact that ruined my motor retainer ring and it took hours to free my motor casing. I was able to salvage it however and will replace the ring with 10-32 screws through the retainer side wall. Here my altimeter data if you're interested:
