These series of tests are designed to give me a better understanding of what I need to do, or not to do while using a "two part recovery" technique. Ryland made it out for his third visit, so I had his help with this test. We prepped the rocket in the afternoon for an early evening flight.
Joel and Michelle came out to watch the launch, Ryland was on the video camera and I was on the 2 computers. One computer for the remote launch control system, the second computer used for the telemetry system. Again for this test, the only means of initiating recovery was from the telemetry system.
The recovery scheme used a single charge on a bulkhead under the nose cone. This charge would blow the nose cone clear of the lower body section while a drogue chute in each section was held together with an elastic band. Once the two sections reached the end of their respective shock cords, the band holding the chutes together would snap off and each section of the rocket would be free to descend under its own chute.
The nose cone had a main chute that could be remotely deployed, the lower body tube at this time used a larger, single chute.
Here's the rocket shortly after leaving the launch rail
Here is just a moment after the apogee charge went off. The white spot in the middle is smoke from the apogee charge.
Here you can the separation of the nose cone (white dot at top of picture), the lower body tube started to tail slide as it never arced over.
A moment later you see the nose cone starting to come down, the lower body tube has now inverted itself in stable downward, nose first dive.
But the main chute catches quickly and the lower body tube starts a controlled descent.
Here you see the nose cone catching up with the lower body tube with the drogue chute trailing, but not open.
Another second later and the nose cone drogue catches and quickly opens.
Both sections land safely near the launch rail.
Click Here for a video of the flight. This is Xvid video format, you can download the codec here for Windows.
If you watched the video you'll notice the nose cone drogue a little late opening. I'm not sure why it was late to open, but since this flight was only to about 700' there wasn't much room for error. In fact, by the time I sent the command to deploy the nose cone main chute, the nose cone was already on the ground. So I didn't get a chance to see if the main would deploy properly. One concern I have with using the elastic band to pull out the body drogue chute is that the elastic band may pull free from one chute, and remain around the other chute, preventing it from opening. That may be in fact what happened with the nose cone drogue in this flight. With the band eventually pulling off from drag as it accelerated towards the ground. I'll have to give it more thought before I make a final decision on the Ganymede flight configuration.
The mini telemetry system continues to work well, even after taking some hard knocks in earlier flights.