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| The team
is registered, and is number 9140. |
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| Still team portrait and photos of the
team at work with Rocksim. |
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Build session with a mid-power payloader. |
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11/20 stills of our team prepping and some other great
rockets at Pueblo. |
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11/20 video of our first flight. |
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11/20 video of our second flight. |
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Rocksim work photos
and photos of the team building our first design.
12-9
12-16 |
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| Still photos of prep for our first flight
of our design. |
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Video of our first flight. Altitude was
astounding, egg broke because chute tacoed. |
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Flight 2. Chute did not come out of fincan.
Altimeter power failure. |
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Rebuild day on 1-27.
Rethinking our guidance system, egg and alitmeter packing, and parachute
packing. |
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Flight 3. 2/12. Excellent
altitude, but thick egg bay chute did not open. Applied baby powder. |
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Flight 4. 2/12. Again,
an excelent altitude, but the shock cord failed, breaking our egg. |
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| Flight 5. Windy conditions,
with a slightly heavier launch weight resulted in a lower altitude.
Chute still won't open. |
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2/12 Still photos. |
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Flight 6.
3/1 early qualification attempt. Mixed bag of success, problems,
solutions, and new data. |
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Flight 7.
3/19 Fountain. Rocket was still below optimum mass. Flight score:
1. |
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Flight 9.
3/19 We're in the optimized mass zone! Predictable altitudes loom. |
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3/1 Still photos. |
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Flight 8.
3/19 Qualification flight with optimization of mass still to occur.
Erratic score/altitude. Non-competitive score of 37. |
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Flight 10. 3/19
Our best flight yet. Score: 6 |
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Flight 11. 3/19 We expand
our mass and wind data curves. |
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3/19 photo stills. |
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Flight 12, 3/23. A good
flight, we expand our database and refine our final mass. Short duration,
but no thermals. |
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Flight 13, 3/23.
Again, we get good numbers but our fincan crashes. |
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Flight 14, 3/23. We experience
our first motor failure of the season. It's hard to see because
of the auto camera focus, but the egg bay deploys 1.05 seconds
after motor burnout. |
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3/23 Still photos. A
gorgeous day with almost no wind and clear, brilliant blue skies. |
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| Flight 15. 3/26 We learn lots of new things
with this flight. Then we regroup. |
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Flight 16. 4/2/11 Crooked
fin resulted in violent corkscrew under thrust. |
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Flight 17. 4/2/11
Still crooked. Tried more ballast. |
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Flight 18. 4/2/11
Tried less ballast. |
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Flight 19. 4/2/11
Rebuilt fincan, but marginal stability, not a straight flight. |
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4/2/11 Still photos. |
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Flight 20. 4/4/11 Last day for qualifying. |
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Flight 21. 4/4/11
We lose a fin. |
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Flight
22. 4/4/11 Official qualification attempt. Good enough to get us
into finals. Score: 8 |
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Post-qualification
flights. Flight
23 4/21. All-new design, low altitude
while fighting wind. Too much stability margin. No spin or corkscrew,
though. Partial damage
to piston shock cord mount (centering ring). Scary interaction
between piston, fincan, and egg bay chute. Recovery time was 'way
too long.
Flight 24 4/21. Complete destruction
of shock cord mount results in whistling thud. Not enough altitude
for finals. Time to rebuild.
Flight 25 5/5. All-new design
with many improvements.
Flight 26 5/7. 2nd flight with
primary finals rocket. Rocksim is great. After adjusting the ballast,
we get a predictable altitude. We've solved our problems with shock
cord mounting, have much better parachute separation between egg
bay and fincan, and our recovery time is good.
Flight 27 5/7. A gust of wind
off the rail knocks the rocket for an S-curve , wind gives us a
good look at how much ballast we need to remove to get good altitude.
Flight 28 5/7. Except for the fact
that we blew up our parachute bay, this was a good flight. We're learning
a lot about possible failure modes with piston ejection.
Flight 29 5/7. We fly our backup rocket for the first time. It confirms
everything we've learned about rocketry for the past 6 months.
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Team
photo with all members.
Flight 30 at a Secret
Location near sea level. We discover that
having a nearly perfect rocket that's completely dialed in, well-tested,
and expertly prepped isn't good enough. The motor produces a
sideways thrust vector and the rocket takes off in a pronounced
S curve. Altitude is less than 90% of previous flights, so this
is an official failed motor (outside of NAR tolerance).
Flight 31. Of the 15 motors we had at finals, this is the only
one that was full power. Perfectly straight, this flight gave
us a score of 7. Two motors like this would have won the competition
the next day.
Flight 32. Another bad thrust vector with S curve. Another weak
motor. Another disappointing altitude.
Flight 33. Same description as Flight 32. In addition, we
determine the point of no return for reefing a hemispherical
chute.
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Flights 34 and 35 were launched
without video. Raining too hard to bring out the camera. |
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Flight
36. 29mb, so it takes a little time to load. Video
of our finals flight; three of our sponsors are named by the
announcer. It looks good. No lurid S curves, a nice-looking straight
up trajectory, but not a full-power motor; this motor was 9.1%
down on power, which put us in 72nd position.
Season videos. These videos are set to
movements of Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Each video
focuses on one particular aspect of the season. 1.
The Vulcanite 2.
Build Filmograph 3.
Build Video 4.
Great Flights 5.
Prep Filmograph 6.
Prep Video 7.
Disastrous Flights 8.
Practice 9. Finals 10.
Sponsors |
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