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Notes from 2 Nov 2013 Amesbury Launch
10 years 6 months ago - 10 years 6 months ago #6923
by mlaudato
Notes from 2 Nov 2013 Amesbury Launch was created by mlaudato
These are my personal notes from a great day on the big field in Amesbury on Saturday 2 Nov 2013.
Lots of certification attempts by the MIT students - some successes, and some scary failures. All in all I would say that the BU crowd two weeks ago was much better prepared - they mostly came with simulations and were able to talk more intelligently about the nature of their rockets. The MIT group overall had less knowledge apparently on things like CG-CP relation, T/W, expected altitude - the basic stuff needed to safely fly and recover a HP rocket.
I had a nominal L2 certification flight of the DX3. Flew to 3103' on a J285, d-less at apogee, main popped out right on schedule at 500', and the whole contraption landed safely about 75' from the pad. I'll get my paperwork into NAR this week and then continue to squander my personal fortune on ever larger rocket motors! Thank you to the flight crew and to my observers. Just for fun, here is a picture of the log page for the flight (artwork and embellishments courtesy of my flight assistant Carmine.)
Not as much altitude data collected this week. My telemetry rig failed - I know why now. The ground station software needs to be up and running BEFORE the air station is switched on. Otherwise the software is attempting to initialize the serial port while live data is coming in on the serial port, and the software crashes. Lesson learned. But between the onboard altimeter data and one Jolly logic reading from my Deuce's Wild flight, I got some data points:
So we're down to one launch next week with MMMSCLUB at Berwick, and then the final CMASS launch the following week at Amesbury. Say it ain't so!
- Matt
Lots of certification attempts by the MIT students - some successes, and some scary failures. All in all I would say that the BU crowd two weeks ago was much better prepared - they mostly came with simulations and were able to talk more intelligently about the nature of their rockets. The MIT group overall had less knowledge apparently on things like CG-CP relation, T/W, expected altitude - the basic stuff needed to safely fly and recover a HP rocket.
I had a nominal L2 certification flight of the DX3. Flew to 3103' on a J285, d-less at apogee, main popped out right on schedule at 500', and the whole contraption landed safely about 75' from the pad. I'll get my paperwork into NAR this week and then continue to squander my personal fortune on ever larger rocket motors! Thank you to the flight crew and to my observers. Just for fun, here is a picture of the log page for the flight (artwork and embellishments courtesy of my flight assistant Carmine.)
Not as much altitude data collected this week. My telemetry rig failed - I know why now. The ground station software needs to be up and running BEFORE the air station is switched on. Otherwise the software is attempting to initialize the serial port while live data is coming in on the serial port, and the software crashes. Lesson learned. But between the onboard altimeter data and one Jolly logic reading from my Deuce's Wild flight, I got some data points:
| Rocket Name | Motor | Takeoff weight | Altitude |
| Super DX3 | CTI 648J285 | 3336g (7.35lb) | 3103ft |
| Deuce's Wild | 2xC6-5 | 134g (0.29lb) | 465ft |
So we're down to one launch next week with MMMSCLUB at Berwick, and then the final CMASS launch the following week at Amesbury. Say it ain't so!
- Matt
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