Tripoli Indiana March 2010

March 2010

/ Ash Grove Site

1 flight, 360 N-sec burned

This was the weekend of our first research launch, and months ahead of time rumors were circulating about big projects that people were going to build. The weather the week before was spectacular, but unfortunately a front moved in Thursday night, dumping two inches of rain on the field and leaving cloudy and windy conditions for Sunday. I only got one rocket in the air, but it was still a fun event, and I'm looking forward to when we do it again!

Flight 1: Norad, PPL I300

I had originally planned to put the Norad up on a Tiger Tail load made up from the leftovers of the batch the group had made a while back. However, with the CATO of Randy's motor and the remaining grains of questionable density, I elected to swap out for a SA load that I had made the following week. To keep the altitude down (and see how this formula performed over a different Kn range), I opened the cores up and only used three grains instead of four, trying to clone an AT I357T. I used the nose cone from my DarkStar Lite (since it had a tracker in it) atop the dual deploy "ProMaxx" section to make sure we got it back. I loaded it on the rail in the light rain; I was really nervous, since I wanted to prove that research motors could work :)) Gus counted down and hit the button; the nichrome wire-wrap igniter took a second to get going, but once it did, the motor lit cleanly and carried the Norad quickly into the dark skies. It kissed the cloud deck, and we could hear the apogee event filter down. I made visual contact again about 500' above the ground, just in time to see the main deploy and the rocket land gently in the muddy field. Nice!

Altitude: 2,546 ft

Norad on a PPL I300

others: ignition

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