2004

September 11-12 CTRA Invitational Launch

Eclipse

It has been a great year for the Eclipse, the work horse of my fleet as it is my favorite rocket to fly.  Things started off not quite so good, at the METRA EX launch when I flew it on the experimental J-600 motor I made it flew great but landed in the river.  It then became the SS Eclipse due to the way it floated.  The following launch at Hurley it ended up 70 feet up a tree but missed that river.  I managed to tree it one more time, but has flown great this season none the less.  At the CTRA Invitational launch I decided to fly it on the largest motor yet, an AMW K800 Blue Baboon.  What a flight, straight as an arrow, fast as a scalded cat, but then all of a sudden it did a little wiggle and straightened back out.  At first I thought I lost a fin but it continued the coast normally.  It was a good ways up when it did that little wiggle so I couldn't tell if anything came off.  At apogee the charge fired and she started down (drogue-less) and everything look normal.  At 600' the main deployed normally.  When I retrieved it I was happy as could be, altimeter was beeping 7,874 feet and two fins suffered damage.  Why would I be happy?  Well look at this:

Look at how those two fins got torn apart.  They are G10 fiberglass and not easy to break.  Why am I happy?  Because that is about as close as you can get to shredding the rocket and still get it back in one piece.  During the flight the rocket hit Mach 1.3 at around 1300 feet then started slowing back down during coast.  It survived the rapid climb through mach, but during the slower deceleration during coast it stayed in the transonic region long enough to suffer this damage.  Most likely cause was the shock waves coming off of the lower launch lug between the fins. 

Time to make it stronger and extend the booster section to take longer motors, I am now determined to push her past 10,000 feet, but in her current state the largest motor case it can take is the 54mm AMW 1750.  So stay tuned for the SS Eclipse mark II.

Mini-BBX with Terrier Booster

photo by Chris Mkovits

My PML MiniBBX in its two stage configuration with the Terrier Booster on the second day of the invitational.  It was a bit gusty so I went with the following motor combination, the booster used a Pro38 3 grain I-212 "smoky sam" with a 7 second delay for the parachute.  The upper stage used an AT H-238T "blue thunder" a hard hitting short burn motor, the co-pilot altimeter was set to deploy a streamer at apogee and the main parachute at 600'.  Upon recovery the altimeter was beeping 2,450 feet.

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