I am currently Tripoli Level 2 certified.

Tripoli 9672.

I obtained my Level one certification in May of 2003. It seemed like it was going to be pretty easy but as fate would have it, it wasn't that simple.

Our first attempt was on the BSD Sprint. A delay blowby in a motor ended that rather quickly. You can see the Sprint page for details.

A few motor problems and damaged rockets later I obtained my Level one certification with my BSD Horizon. You can see the details of the flight on the Horizon page.

I will be attempting my Level 2 certification in March or April of 2004 with the BSD Thor.

Stay tuned for details.

Level 2 Certification Attempt 3-20-04

***NOTE***

The rest of this page is very large, if you are on a highspeed connection it should load fine and quickly, pics have been reduced but there are allot of them, so dial up viewers it may take a few minutes to load all the pictures. I wanted to show all the picture documentation.

***

Well after months of preparation and probably 40 hrs of work building, prepping, and testing the Thor I finally had an opportunity to attempt a certification flight.

I had been watching the weather all week prior, and the forecast was constantly changing, light winds early in the week went to 30mph gusting winds later, then finally the night before the detailed hourly forecast went to 16 to 20 mph winds. More than I would have preferred but not too bad.  I had the Thor setup for dual deployment anyway which was ideal for reducing drift.

The plan was to take my written test first thing in the morning, then prep the Thor for flight. Flight plan was for an 18" drogue deployment at apogee, and then main deployment at 800' for a soft touchdown.

When we arrived it was breezy as the forecast had promised. I took my written test and scored 100% and was ready to go.

I then began prepping the rocket for flight.

Double checking the Electronics and the Altimeter bay. Did I mention it was a cold north wind, that's why I'm sitting on the ground prepping instead of using the table.

Electronics bay going onto the booster section. Routing wires and recovery harness into tube.

Tannor in the trunk to stay out of the cold north wind, but always willing to help out and tell me what I should be doing next. Final prep, almost ready.

All set and ready to go, checking the wires to make sure ends are taped so we can't get any accidental arming.

Time to build the motor, too cold outside, so I did this in the car to keep the dust out of the build process. Picture is of the casing I borrowed. Take a good look at it, notice it's straight, and round, you'll see another picture later.

Well here we are ready to go.  Tannor always liked this rocket. Both recovery systems in place and checked, motor built and in place. (minus igniter) We're ready to take it out to the pad.

Here's the Thor on the pad and ready to go. The scary part is about to begin. The pictures below were taken by several different people, I'll put them in chronological order of the flight, but you'll see some varying sizes of pictures and quality.

Here everything appears to be normal as the motor comes up to power.

Now here something is definitely amiss, the thrust ring on the LOC motor adapter let go, the 38/720 casing with a burning J350 inside then traveled up through the booster here and slammed into the bottom of the Electronics bay, it had enough of a run that it punched the eye bolt right through the bulkhead plate which was coated both sides with an 1/8" thick layer of 30 min epoxy.

You can just see flame appearing at the top of the booster section as the motor is pushing everything up out of it's way.

The motor hit hard enough that it sheared all three shear pins that were in the nosecone.

Here the motor has actually traveled up through and out of the booster section, you can see the drogue to the right and top of the booster, you can also follow the Kevlar shock cord up to the top of the picture, still secured to the Electronics bay. Note that the booster is still sitting on the rail.

The casing hit so hard that it bent it, a curved casing apparently flies in loopty loops, and it headed toward the LCO table under full power.

Here you can see where the payload section finally hit the end of the kevlar shock cord, it then lifted the booster section up and off the rail. I left the picture large so that you can actually see the shock cord between the two pieces.

At about this time the motor is slamming into the ground maybe 10 ft from the LCO table. Not a very comfortable feeling.

Here you can see where the motor ended up. To the left end of the adapter you can see the discoloration from where the thrust ring was epoxied on. Adapter was built per the directions using 30 min epoxy.

The Damage

Here's what's left. Damaged beyond repair are the booster section, payload section, electronics bay, casing, forward closure, and motor adapter.

Repairable is the Altimeter bay.

Undamaged is the nose cone.

Here's the booster section, you can see the crease above the fin, the crease goes all the way through to the motor mount tube which is also creased.

The payload bay here is creased heavily all the way through just above the coupler, in person actually looks worse than picture.

Here's the bottom of the electronics bay where the motor came up and slammed into it, you can see the eye bolt has been pushed up through the bulkhead plate, the rings around it are the ripples/cracks in the epoxy.

If this casing looks to be more narrow in the middle than at the ends, that's because it is, it's ovaled through the middle.  If it looks like from the bottom to the top that it bends to the left, that's because it does. Forward closure is still in it because it will no longer come off.

Videos

There are three video's here, the first is normal speed and about 2.25mb's in size. The second is a shorter clip but shown in slow motion (1.25mb's) . The third is shown in even slower motion (.75mbs). I forgot to have my wife set the video camera to high shutter speed so the slow motion videos get a little blurry, and the last one actually gets blurry and doubles.

Right click and save to your desktop or you can just click the link and let it buffer then view.

Video 1 (normal speed flight)

In Closing

Well I guess I got bit again, I've got over 250 rocket flights under my belt and I've had 3 CATO's (catastrophe at take off) and all three of them have been during cert flights. My first two Level one cert flights suffered delay blowby's in the motors.

This one the thrust ring on the motor adapter let go allowing the motor to go up through the rocket. 

Out one rocket, one forward closure, possibly one altimeter although right now I think it's ok. Owe Kevin a new 720 casing, so to say the least it was an expensive flight, not to mention probably at least 40 hours of my time.  

That's rocketry, and that's why rocketeers get those butterflies in their stomachs when hearing the countdown on a highpower rocket, there's allot at stake and allot that can go wrong in just a fraction of a second.

Back to Main