ROCStock 40
November 2014
/ Lucerne Dry Lake
1 flight, 3646 N-sec burned
After the mayhem of ROCtober, I was looking forward to a good ol'fashioned ROCStock. The weather was great and there were lots of cool rockets flying. As an added bonus, Saul Gonzalez from KCRW attended to do a story which later ended up on Which Way, LA?, the KCRW Curious blog, and WBUR's "Only A Game". Not bad for a "regional" launch!
Flight 1: Arcas, AT L850
The venerable Arcas made its 18th flight with another Aerotech L850W. The Arcas made a nice boost on the big L motor, but the slight wiggle apparent on flight #17 was a bit more pronounced; I think the cardboard is getting soft. Regardless, things made it up to apogee in pretty decent shape. Last time we flew this combo I didn't have my 20D, so the liftoff shots were limited in quality. This time, though, they came out perfect! Drogue deployment was easily visible at apogee, and we could see it all the way down--instead of getting smaller and smaller (drifting away) it was getting bigger and bigger, until the main popped and it landed gently, 20 yards behind the back row of pads. Holy cow it was calm! Perfect flight.
Altitude: 13,587 ft
others: under drogue | touchdown!
