Into Thin Air

My heavily modified Expediter Rocket with strap-on video camera punched a hole in the sky with an L730 imported from Cesaroni, a Canadian aerospace & defense company. Their unique thermoplastic propellant burns cleanly, showing multiple shock diamonds at full size.

That is the largest motor possible for this mid-size rocket… and it disappeared out of sight around 10K feet up (perhaps the highest altitude flight of the day). I did not have room for RF tracking, so I hope someone finds it over the next few days… =)

One second after launch, as the rocket was approaching Mach1, the camera strap ripped off (as I anticipated in seeking club permission for this flight), and it tumbled back safely by streamer (the strap itself). The camera is fine, but the shock of landing popped the SD card out, so unfortunately, it did not get to save any video from the buffer. I learned the hard way to tape the SD card in for the next flight.

It was a very satisfying launch from the ground though. And I’m glad the fiberglassed fins survived an airspeed of 950 MPH (according to the RockSim flight simulation).

Here’s the ground launch video.