Second Flight of the Micro Hybrid on 4/23/00

It was a partly cloudy day....

Launch # 2 was on a Quest Icarus rocket. I was joined by Kerry Garrison of WildRocketry.Com, who was there gathering info for an article he will be writing on my project. After 2 attempts to light the motor the 3rd time was the charm and off it went. Liftoff was much faster than the previous rocket due to the lighter construction. This rocket is actually meant for a "C" motor. All I did was change the motor mount and add my own parachute. Everything else was by the book.

As the rocket gained altitude you could see the glow if the exhaust flame as it lined up just right. At apogee the rocket arced over and started it's decent. At this point the altimeter stepped in and did it's job. A faint pop and there it was, the rocket hanging from the parachute. Since there was no piston system in this rocket I used Estes wadding for the ejection. The rocket floated very slowly as it returned to the launch site. As Kerry and I walked closer I feared that it might land in the large trees behind the other baseball diamond but it changed direction slightly and landed at the edge of the dirt.

We walked up to the rocket wondering what altitude the altimeter would be beeping, but there was silence! I looked in the payload section and the altimeter was GONE! We backtracked a bit and found the nose cone. As I picked it up I heard the altimeter beeping farther ahead. When we got to it, it was laying face down in the grass beeping 365 feet. Just past the 300 feet it needed to deploy the chute.

Gathering everything up we wrapped it up and headed out. A very successful day.

Conclusions: The flight was better due to a lighter rocket. The altimeter was ejected because the nose cone came off, but it did survive a fall from over 300 feet. I will start work on fuel grains that can provide more "fire and smoke". Most likely they will be cast HTPB based. The paper grains will still be the basic grain to use. Although the rocket only reached a little over 300 feet, it was an exciting flight, especially for this small park. Plus it only cost about $1 to fly it. How much is a "D" motor these days?

Thanks again to Kerry who was able to join me and witness this flight.