Moments after motor burnout, I had premature drag separation of the nose cone from the body (this is an inertia effect related to the weight of the nose). I had anticipated this possibility and added external tape across the nose-to-body seam that I didn’t have on earlier flights, but alas, it was insufficient…
In a flash, she disintegrated in a supersonic shred overhead (my first… and oh, have I tried =). When the body tube caught air, it provided a violent air brake that zippered the body with the Kevlar shock cord and ripped the metal eyebolt and washer right through the bulkhead plate! It yanked a hole right through it. Three large chunks tumbled to the ground around us, and the detached parachute drifted off after ripping free of its shroud lines.
Moments earlier, the sheer speed created a pressure wave that delaminated a large 2″ sticker on the body tube! I have never seen that before. The sticker was under clear coat paint layers too. The sticker colors are gone, and a sticky ghost of the image remains. I recovered everything except the chute.
The Binder Design Thug was my L1 bird, and I have been moving up the motor sizes to test her limits and thought I had reached the pinnacle with a J350 flight in the desert (despite many bets by more experienced rocketeers that it wouldn’t be stable, or keep the fins on during supersonic flight, etc.) The motor pushes up against the nosecone. And it sticks out the back a bit for space (GLR bell cone), and I had to file down the nose cone base, and I had to add spacers on the body as the nose cone still wouldn’t seat in the body. The parachute is in a donut around the motor.
So she has a history.
When the J500G motor came out, I immediately knew that this should be the Thug’s next challenge. This new “Mojave Green” rocket fuel generates the highest impulse / volume of any AeroTech propellant. The thrust plume to rocket height ratio is especially nice here. It’s generating an insane 51 g’s of acceleration per RockSim.
I love the Green burn, which used to require a specialty motor from Animal Motor Works, but their hardware is a pain.
In the foreground is Rob’s gorgeous carbon fiber bird with four onboard computers beeping in anticipation, but alas, she was grounded as the launch controller could not deliver enough current for his custom-dipped igniter.
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