Breaking the Certification Jinx
Anyone who's followed my certification attempts or history on my website knows I am totally jinxed when it comes to cert flights.
Any other flight, that isn't a cert flight and everything goes exactly as planned almost every time. Cert flights however, and I'm sitting on an average of 3 attempts per level.
Level 1 and Level 2 both had failures that had nothing to do with the rocket's abilities, or rocket failures. I had motor failures, reducer failures, electronics learning curve issues, etc. After the certs were done I could repeat the flights over and over with no problems and they went great, it was just a cert flight jinx that's been plagueing me.
Level 3 Cert Flight coming up
So with my Level 3 certification flight coming up, and way to much of a monetary investment in that to be able to have problems on the flight I've been working on a plan to break this jinx from the beginning.
First
My first Level 2 flight I believe would have been completely successful had the motor adapter, built per the instructions, not failed. So in the design of this rocket, with one goal in mind, I eliminated the need for any adapter. I built this rocket with a 75mm motor tube with target motors of either the M1315 or the M1400, both 75mm motors.
I took a little lecturing on this idea being reminded by everyone of the standard rule, "you can always adapt down, but never up". Well in this case I didn't care, I want this cert on the first attempt and removed this possibility of failure completely. From the beginning of the design phase this was the idea and I stuck to it.
Second
While looking through old flight photos I noticed something. Every time I had worn a certain hat, each flight had gone as planned and turned out very well. So....
The hat has been made my "lucky hat", and as you can see in the build pictures of my Level 3 Rocket, it was worn any time I was working on the rocket. From designing the bird, to every aspect of the build I wore this hat, and it will be worn during my L3 cert flight. There's alot to the planning and design when making a successful flight, but here I'm going to try to cover the luck aspect also.
Third
Again, making sure the luck factor is covered, my lucky Saint Florian coin. Saint Florian is the "Patron Saint of Firefighters" and the coin has worked for me in the past. The coin will be in my hand during ignition and flight, seems rubbing the coin very nervously with the thumb also help.. LOL
Fourth and Last
As with any rocket flight, planning and attention to detail is paramount and that has not been left out here.
This rocket was designed in the beginning in about 6 or 7 days. That's 6 or 7 full days worth of planning. Everything was tweaked over and over again, overall external dimensions have always remained the same but internally, and the length of the different sections were changed many times. Anti zipper booster, shear pins, materials used, how applied were all planned out. Specific areas were designed to be the most likely to fail so that in the event of a failure repairs would be minimal.
Construction took nearly a solid month. That's not a month of weekends, but nearly every day for a month, 8 to 10 hour days meticulously working. It was nice to see things come out and work the way I had envisioned them, when it all came together it was very satisfying.
During flight prep, I will have sufficient quiet space with minimal distractions, as well as more than ample help from several experienced fliers during the preperation and recovery of the flight.
Conclusion
Well I feel like I have all the bases covered and feel confident in the flight. So hopefully everything will go well and we'll return with some great stories, pics, and video after the flight on June 18th, 2005.
Of course I've felt confident before and then........
Hey it worked!!!!!!! The jinx is broken. Go to the Level 3 pages and check out the flight page for details.