Darkstar 3

After the no-drogue-main situation on its previous flight, I had pretty much given up on having a 3" Darkstar. But at AIRFest in 2017, Jason Griffin's two stage 3" Darkstar flight looked like it was being piloted by a drunk monkey, and Jason wanted to get rid of the booster (too many fins). I offered him $50 for it and it came back to California with me. It looks pretty much the same, but it's painted in Jason's signature school bus yellow! I had prepped the avbay and motor the month before at ROCStock, but the wind picked up and I never got to fly it. Prep was nearly instantaneous, and the rocket was on the pad by 9:30 or so. The signature White Lightning motor performed well and recovery was easy as we packed up and said quick goodbyes. A perfect flight for a quick day of rockets!

I had the Darkstar prepped for a full dual deploy mission, but didn't feel like walking too far. The slow-paced day gave me plenty of opportunity to dwell on motor selection, and I had managed to narrow it down to two choices: either a J1055 Vmax to teleport it to a few thousand feet, or a J250 Skidmark to make the mission really worthwhile. I left it up to the students and they, of course, chose the sparky, so that's what happened. The ride up was spectacular--this was one of the first motors out of the new batch of Ti, and holy crap it was loud. The flight was nice and easily visible through drogue deployment at apogee and main deployment a few seconds later, landing a stone's throw from the LCO table. Nice and relaxing!

After vacillating all day on motor choice for the second flight of the Darkstar 3, I settled on another 1706 load I had yet to fly. The K1103X is the incredible thunder child of a K550W and a K1100T, except with another H motor's worth of total impulse. I was confident the rocket could take it, but when Rick Magee counted down and hit the button and the rocket bolted off the rail with a brain-melting roar, I got nervous for a second. (GARY I REALLY LIKE THIS MOTOR PLEASE MAKE A BIGGER ONE.) Of course things went fine and the rocket cruised on up to apogee past 11,000'. The upper event was once again invisible, but main deployment happened just uprange, easily visible from the truck. Thanks to dad for getting it back for me!

For the shakedown flight of the Darkstar, I went for a CTI blue load I had yet to see very many of: the P54-3G. Rick Magee called out the count and hit the button, and the new rocket powered into the sky atop a blue flame, weathercocking gently into the wind. At burnout, it disappeared against the spotty clouds, but all seemed well. However, the tracker died a lot sooner than I expected: no main deployment? After a quick search downwind, I located the rocket laying intact with the main still in place. Turns out cheaping out and using a centering ring on the forward end of a same-end dual deploy setup is a no-go--the ejection charge will blow the bulkhead apart instead of blowing the chute out. No matter: no damage, and after swapping out bulkheads, ready to fly again in no time!