Nala1 mission 6 update
(Sunday, July 22, 2012 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH)
As I prepare Nala1 for mission #7 this weekend (July 28th), I realized that in all of the craziness of the past couple of weeks, I didn’t create a blog entry for mission 6 yet!
Nala1 mission 6 (ALS-047) was a picture perfect flight, lifting off gracefully from the MTMA high power launch pad, and soaring to a height of 1063 feet. Top speed was 249 MPH.
The specific goal of this mission was to test apogee recovery using just a streamer for a “drogue” parachute. If the payload section of Nala1 could stay at a higher position from the lower booster section, the test would be a success, which is was! The end result of this test was to try to further minimize “wind drift” from apogee (1063 feet) to the altitude of the main parachute deployment (400 feet). This was accomplished.
At recovery, the main parachute was deployed near the only rocket catching tree in the field, and so I had to recover Nala1 from that tree. No damage to the rocket from that mission at all.
This weekend’s scheduled mission will test an apogee decent with no streamer or parachute (drogueless). If this looks good, then all future flights will be drogueless for Nala1, and for the next generation of “Harmon Flying Field rockets”.
There is your quick update on mission ALS-047!
((( )))