Extreme Air Mail! Mailing Tube Rocket Project!

Guys! It's finally happening!

I got the motors I need to launch this thing! I'm planning to go tomorrow morning, early. I want to launch the mailing tube as early as possible before any people show up to the park since there's a high probability of catastrophic failure.

As of right now I want to leave the house around 6:30-7am. It takes about an hour to get to the field. It's still possible I'll need to scrub depending on conditions at the field but hopefully I can get a video up very soon!

Stay tuned!
 
Ok! Here it is! This morning my sister and I went out to the local park where we have been launching. Our usual spot was too populated with dog walkers, even at 7:30am so we found another suitable field nearby.

I present to you the footage!


I hope the HD version comes through. The file was too big to upload directly to the site so I uploaded it to my YouTube channel and inserted it here.
 
Haha I'm glad you like it! All in all it actually flew pretty well. If the delay was a lot shorter it might have deployed the parachute and inflated just a few feet from the ground, which is what I was hoping would happen.

I'm thinking about trying a make a shorter delay motor out of a D12-0 booster. I need the chute to pop almost instantly after the propellant burns out.
 
That's great! It flew pretty well, obviously on the heavy side. Normally, I'd suggest against a 0 delay deployment, but you might need to in this case! You can't really change the delay on Estes motors. The design just doesn't work for it. And even on composite motors, delays have a lower limit where they just become -0 anyway, or burn through while the motor is still burning.

Even so, your scratch built rocket flew decently and while recovery had issues, you flew and landed without harming anyone. Learn from it and keep going!
 
I was wondering if I could use a booster motor, with no ejection charge and place my own ejection charge in the top of it. The idea being that when the motor burns through, the ejection charge will ignite with zero delay.

I know some of the high power guys use custom ejection set ups. Most use electronics to send battery power to an E-match or some other ignition source and light a small charge of black powder. I've even seen Christmas light bulbs used to initiate the burning of an ejection charge. You carefully break the glass bulb and utilize the filament as the ignitor.

Just a thought. This can be tested on a bench stand I think.
 
I was holding my breath. I loved the low-slow flight path. I can't believe it lawn darted! Yes you need to figure out a shorter or zero ejection delay or maybe shed a little weight to get a little more velocity and height? Priceless video!
Robert
 
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