If I were 2.72 miles tall...

...the view might look something like this:

Here's the onboard video from my M1230 Imax flight this last Saturday at Roctober/Lucerne Dry Lake (best in 720p, full screen)(note the ill-fated desert beetle scaling the igniter just before the flame deluge):

This was my first solid, high-altitude Beeline GPS data set as plotted in Google Earth with a peak altitude of 14,434' AGL and recovery 0.8 miles S-SE from the pad:

It's interesting to note the the ARTS2 reported a peak barometric altitude of 13,915' and the Raven gave 13,925' for an average of 13,920'.  That's the closest I've ever seen two altimeters! (Only 0.07% disagreement).  I also passed mach 1 at about 3 seconds into the boost on the way to a peak of mach 1.15 or ~887MPH.  Here are links to the data images if you're interested:

Raven - tabular
Raven - graph
ARTS2 - tabular
ARTS2 - graph
ARTS2 - motor performance (M1230 -> M1374)
ARTS2 - coefficient of drag performance

Next up is that same rocket on an M840 White moonburner at Plaster Blaster 2011 from November 4-6.  We're hoping to pull together a drag race but approval is pending.  You should come check it out!

Update:  I forgot to include the cool liftoff shot by LL.  Unfortunately the full-size shot is significantly back-focused due to the lens sitting in the sun for awhile.  LL has razor sharp vision and manually focused about a half hour before the flight but even this smaller size rendering with significant sharpening is quite soft.   Not complaining... just explaining.  I recommend that you keep all your big lenses in the shade at all times if possible:

Update 2 (4/3/12) - I just found two more cell phone photos from this flight: the GPS tracking shot and recovery photo:

Belated: L585 with perfect dual deploy!

My fourth and final flight at Plaster City's June '11 launch was my new 4" fiberglass Extreme DarkStar.  I've sort of resisted the 75mm motor class for a decade but now I'm into it.  I ran some calculations and the cost in $/N•s is identical between 75mm and 98mm reloads (~$0.06-0.10/N•s).  This means the overall cost is lower with identical impulse per $.   Big fan.
     The wind was kicking up big time but I was confident that dual deploy combined with shear pins would bring the rocket down reasonably close.  Unfortunately my keychain video camera died on the K740 flight below so I have no onboard or ground-based video. The pix are still good though.  KO snapped this prep shot and I like it! (ignore my photo credit as that's an artifact of batch export):

Here's the pressure up:

And liftoff... note the excessive wind blowing the plume:

The ascent was arrow-straight but I lost site after apogee ejection because I was using CO2 deployment and a tiny drogue 'chute.  This was also my first time using the Beeline GPS unit because the fiberglass structure doesn't attenuate the signal.  Unfortunately I forgot to tape the unit down to the foam mount so I think it dropped to the bottom of the electronics bay on liftoff as my GPS altitude data was wonky.  I did receive what appeared to be directional information, however, so I started walking NW.  Then I heard a loud pop as the 4g main black powder charge blew at roughly 1200' as expected.  I watched the rest of the descent and it landed only ~1/4 mile NW of the launch site (closer than most flights in low wind!).  Luckily the dragging parachute caught on a bush so no damage was done by subsequent dragging.  Stupid mass convection.  Here's the Raven Altimeter data with a barometric peak altitude of 7,489':


And here's the ARTS2 altimeter data with a barometric peak altitude of 7,233' for an average of 7,361' (1.39 miles) at sub-Mach velocity:


I also ran the ARTS2 motor analysis and the report says it's an L680 (vs. the nominal L585).

Finally the ARTS2 coefficient of drag was roughly 0.5 at peak velocity.

I next plan to fly this rocket on the same propellant type but twice the motor size (M1230) so I expect roughly twice the altitude or ~14,000'.  Fingers crossed for October 8th!

Belated: K740 C-Star = Must try!

From the June '11 Plaster City launch... I finally got around to editing this simple onboard video:



The boost was loud and fast and I think I trimmed the delay to about 15 seconds.  The coast to apogee seems supa long.  I would have dropped in some frame grabs but the source video was overexposed for some reason and I didn't want to delay this entry further.  Oh and after about a well-heated, 15-minute hike north I located the goods via radio tracker:

It's official + dedicated e-mail address

I created a dedicated e-mail address for prospective L3 flyers yesterday (masked to prevent spamming d-heads from e-mail fishing):

     TripoliL3TAP[at]gmail.com

In sending that change to Debra I noticed that Tripoli's TAP page has been updated to include myself and Richard King Ph.D (a central CA flyer simultaneously advocated by Jack Garibaldi).

Either address will work but the above is preferred and dedicated to the hobby.  Fly high, flyers!

"L3 First Try!"

I've wanted to author a primer to help those aspiring to their Tripoli level 3 certification.  After sharing the initial draft I incorporated feedback from KO and Frank and here's the result:

L3 First Try! v1.0f.pdf    (updated to v1f on 12/21/14)

Enjoy and let me know if you have any additional feedback or questions.

Great TAP success!!

Debra Koloms just informed me that I was promoted to Tripoli's L3 Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) and I'm elated!  I could not have attained this honor without Debra and the board's advocacy, the sponsorship of Jack Garibaldi, the support of Paul Snow and Kurt Gugisberg, and letters of recommendation from Frank Hermes and Kris Olmstead.

Thank you all and I vow to do my very best to serve Tripoli and its membership for decades to come!

=G=

Greg Smith

TRA#8756, L3 TAP
TripoliL3TAP[at]gmail.com

P.S. Here's Tripoli's official Level 3 process.

June '11 @ Plaster City: Polecat Aerospace Super Raven x 2

For once I finished the video for these flights last week but have been remiss on my posting punctuality.  In any event I built the very pointy Super Raven kit from Jack Garibaldi at What's Up Hobby and it's a good time!  At this month's essentially wind-free Plaster  City launch I captured photos and vid of both flights so here goes...  First up was the CTI Pro38 I180 Skidmark with an HD keychain camera Gorilla-taped to the side:

And a crop of the flame detail showing lovely mass convection:

Next up was the CTI Pro38 H400 Vmax for a flight that was so fast that I reverted to a ground-based 30 fps video to show the fun:

Here's the video featuring both flights (as always 720p full-screen viewing on YouTube satisfies best):

The date/time info is whack and only the time is useful in a relative sense.  This was a great launch with solid weather and several folks whooped ass at our final launch before the summer break.  Special props to Mike Caplinger who achieved 21,127' feet with a K300 to best the Club's 20K President's Challenge!!

NSL @ Lucerne 'blows'

When I arrived at 9:15AM yesterday it was already too windy for my tastes.  KO prepped her L3 flight and got it on the pad at 1PM only to have the range shut down at 1:30 due to excessive wind.  I'm hoping she stayed overnight and tried again this morning as only minimal setup time would have been required.

Finally... amazing Plaster City conditions!

I had 4/4 successful flights at Plaster today with excellent conditions. I gathered so many photos and so much video and data that I'll plan to post thorough updates for each likely as separate entries.  Oh and I finally used my Big Red Bee Beeline GPS unit, Frank!  I'm spent so it's a shower then off to bed for me now.

...and again. Plus Sport Rocketry Cover

Everyone brace yourselves... Plaster City was once again blown out!  I arrived at 9:30 on Saturday morning to find gusts at 20MPH.  Two brave flyers still flew L motors and it turned out that this was a surface wind topping out at about 500'.  I was still marginally disgusted with the conditions and bailed before noon.  I admit that I'm a fair weather sort of flyer.
     On a happier note I also learned that one of my photos of Mike Worthen's J500G liftoff made the cover of NAR's Sport Rocketry magazine:

Thanks to Larry Brand for linking me up with them.  They're sending me a copy as one can only get the magazine as part of a NAR membership.  Since NAR used to ban 'rebels' for flying G motors back in the early 80s I've elected to remain solely a Tripoli member.  I'm stoked that I could help the magazine, however.