Activity

I used the Dog Collar GPS that some club members are in on. My last fix was 1.5 miles WSW of the launch site at 21,600 feet AGL. I’m not quite sure if my main deployed or drogue only. The…   Read more»

Adrian: that’s a 3d view. It’s a bit easier to see when you’re actually in google earth.

Wondering if anyone knows what the wind direction was sunday at MHM from 10:00 to 11:00 from 10,000 feet AGL to 20,000 AGL. I lost GPS tracking of my rocket at about 21,000 feet AGL and have no idea which…   Read more»

I had the forward section of my Little Dog (booster separated…) with my GPS in it (luckily) head east over the windmill. I drove around and parked at the windmill and headed east on foot across the valley due east,…   Read more»

Shredder,I had a flight at about 9:50 am on Sunday that went to 33,000 AGL, ended up about 2 miles NNE about 1/2 mile past the ATV draw area. I was out there again on Thursday doing some shovel recovery…   Read more»

Shredder,I launched from the red pad right next to the tower at the away cell at about 9:30 Sunday morning and went to 16K. Here is the track log from the DC-20:

Oh, and my fin can is paint Krylon gloss black and should be somewhere SE of the launch rails, the rest of the rocket was retrieved about 0.7 miles from the rail just SE of where the big Nike launched.

They’ve been at orbit for a while with the Falcon 1, but this is a significantly heavier-lift vehicle. Definitely a great accomplishment.

Congrats to SpaceX – this is the first new-space company to reach orbit and the first orbital flight where development costs were NOT paid by a government entity. Elon did it….finally.Warren

care to post a picture of the Z-pard? Came up with very little on Google, other than edward himself at http://www.rocketryforumarchive.com/showthread.php?t=6715&page=3BAsically a Z-pard is a small device that uses a metal piston to deploy the nosecone. You are using basically…   Read more»

Sean,Contact me about the Z-pard – I’ve got one made and the packing issues have vanished :)Edward

Unfortunately we never pulled data off the other Raven for the first flight as the way it was mounted to the board required removal to access the data port, so we just figured we’d download it after the second flight…   Read more»

Guys, had the coupler been the only thing in the rocket, I think “binding” would be the prime suspect. The game-changer here is that Sean used the motor for the coupler, and the section of glass coupler was on top…   Read more»

Sean,The Raven data for your 1st flight showed 18K alt with the baro and 21K with the accel data.After reading everyone’s ideas about the failure of the second flight I would think the idea that the fg coupler caused a…   Read more»

With the experiences of folks like John Wilke and various sundry others I found on the web, the ONLY BP charges I do now are surgical tubing… Won’t even bother with anything else. My L3 deployed flawlessly.W

Sean – how high was flight #1 vs. flight #2? did you go appreciably higher on the second boost?The gremlins come out and play at mach 2+ and ~20K altitude… it took me a few swings at the plate to…   Read more»

Information like this is invaluable to me. It gives me insights to issues I am very foggy in understanding.The pictures were amazing.Sorry about your rocket. It was gorgeous.

All my sympathies Sean… such a gorgeous project, such a nice Up part to the flight. All my best on your next try.Warren

Adrian if you can somehow pull some data off of these that would be amazing:Ouch. Your data is on the part that used to be attached to the pads labeled “U$9” and is apparently now somewhere in a deep hole….   Read more»

Contained properly BP is a great choice. Less bulky, has plenty of punch, easy to handle and use.http://www.libertylaunchsystems.com/RocketsMagazine/Issue0007/sample.pdfAt the end of that PDF you can see the author’s Z-PaRD. Mine doesn’t have that shackle on the left side – just…   Read more»