Six team members heading to the Maryland launch site on Saturday, August 15, to test streamer recovery again. It was a very warm day with no wind.  We used two old rockets using our old launch rod. The flights were very straight but we had some ejection charge and chute deployment problems.  We were not able to slow streamer descent as much as we need to.

Objectives

• Use some Old Glory and Fat Boy rockets to test streamer recovery.
• Try two 6x60in streamers with dowel stiffing and two connection points.
• Try three 6x60in streamers with dowel stiffing and three connection points.
• Try bath towel material as a streamer - 6x60 inch.
• Try a slower burning motor to take up time in the air.

Lessons

• We had problems with the small chute deploying from the booster. It seemed to get stuck with the chute protector.  We tried taping it to the streamers, but this only worked once.  We need to rethink some of this.
• We tried F12-5J reloadable motors - slower burners. We were hoping for longer flight time to apogee, but we had ejection well before apogee, so it wasn't a good test. The ejection charges may have been disturbed by work on the rockets after loading the motors.
• We cut holes in the streamer, but it didn't appear to slow descent.
• The chute failed to deploy on the test 3 Fat Boy, but the booster came down slower than the cargo because it was very light after motor burn out.  It may be possible to claim a tumble recovery for a very light booster.
• Three streamers didn't seem to slow descent over two streamers.  We need some new ideas to slow descent under streamers.
• We considered using bath towel material for a streamer but noticed that a towel with no cargo was very heavy and came down rather fast.  We didn't actually try this.

Launches

Altimeter Data (Excel format)

Pictures