Four team members traveled to the Maryland launch site on Saturday, September 19, to again test streamer recovery. It was a beautiful day with no wind.  We used our old Fat Boy and our old launch rod.  We only got in two flights because there were a lot of other participants.  NARHAMS was doing a night launch later.  But we made great progress in slowing the descent rate of our streamer recovery.

Objectives

• Try two streamers - one connected to the back of the cargo unit, and one connected to the side.
• Try streamers made of thicker material (1.7oz material instead of the 1.1 oz material).
• Try a 7x70in streamer.

Lessons

• By folding the edge of the booster streamer over the top of the cargo streamer, we got good deployment of all streamers.
• The thicker streamers increased drag and are getting us close to our target.
• The cargo still descended nose down and the streamers deployed close to each other.  We could increase the distance between the streamers if we made the cargo unit longer by 2 inches or more.
• The E18-4W almost got us to the target altitude.  But when we actually build a new rocket, it will be heavier (440g) and so we are predicting we will be using an F24-4W.
• We need to remember to force distance focus on the camera so we can see the recovery descent.

Launches

Altimeter Data (Excel format)