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+[[!tag tags/rockets]]
+As some of you know, the first weekend in October was a big deal for me,
+because it was [NCR's](http://ncrocketry.org) Oktoberfest launch event.
+My son and I spent the weekend camped out on the prairie
+with Keith Packard and many of our other friends. Keith successfully went
+from nothing to a "level 2" high power certification, which was pretty cool.
+I wasn't quite so lucky.
+
+On Saturday morning, I flew my custom-designed rocket YikStik for a "level 3"
+certification attempt. The name comes from the word my wife uses to describe
+lipstick. The rocket was built from a mixture of custom and
+[Giant Leap](http://giantleaprocketry.com)
+parts, including 98mm Dyna Wind airframe, a 98-75mm tail cone retainer, and
+a Pinnacle nose cone. All the centering rings were cut on my 3-axis CNC
+milling machine, and the fins were custom 7-layer composite layups using
+plywood, carbon fiber, fiberglass, and epoxy... all vacuum bagged using a
+kitchen food saver appliance. Painted red, gold, and black, with a custom
+8 foot main parachute sewn by my wife Karen from the
+[Team Vatsaas](http://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/systems/Parachutes/Chute.aspx)
+design in red and black rip-stop nylon.
+
+The motor selected was an
+[Aerotech](http://www.aerotech-rocketry.com)
+M1297W reload. This is a 75mm diameter motor 66.5cm in length with 2722 grams
+of propellant yielding 5417 Newton-seconds of total impulse. It was also on
+sale earlier this year for cert attempts.
+My simulations
+said YikStik should have flown to about 14,800 feet above ground level at the
+NCR north site on this motor.
+
+The launch went perfectly, and the rocket was stunningly beautiful under boost.
+It disappeared into some high clouds, but we continued to have strong signals
+from the two tracking transmitters installed in the payload bay behind the
+nose cone. About the anticipated time after launch, we saw a rocket descending
+under chute in the distance, and headed in that direction. A few minutes
+later, we abruptly lost both tracking signals, and that's when things took a
+turn for the weird.
+
+In hindsight, I think we suffered an apogee deployment of the main chute, and
+the rocket we saw descending was someone else's. YikStik
+was designed to deploy a streamer at apogee, then descend fairly quickly
+to about 1500 feet above ground where a second set of ejection charges would
+fire to separate the nose cone on a 3 foot drogue parachute that would pull a
+deployment bag containing the main chute out of the airframe and then pull
+the bag off the chute. The nose cone, payload bay with the tracking
+transmitters, and deployment bag would then descend under the drogue chute and
+the remainder of the rocket would descend under the big chute. In the world
+of deployment bags, this is called a 'free bag' configuration. With deployment
+at 1500 feet, the two bits should have landed within sight of each other. But
+that didn't happen.
+
+It wasn't until late Sunday afternoon, after we had to leave to get Keith to
+the airport, that some friends finally located the nose cone assembly about
+3.5 miles down range from the launch site, over a couple rises and past an
+area of rough terrain. By then it was cold, windy, and rainy, and so I really
+appreciated the effort they put in locating the nose, and wasn't too surprised
+that they didn't immediately see the rest. Since the bulk of the rocket under
+the main should have had a slightly higher descent rate than the nose cone,
+I expected to find the rest of the rocket somewhere near a line between the
+launch rail and where the nose cone was discovered. So last Wednesday I
+spent about 5.5 hours walking around the area searching... but no luck.
+Since then, several other people have been out looking for my rocket,
+including two friends who flew over the area today in a light plane looking
+down into all the washes. Still nothing.
+
+I posted some signs in the area with a photo of the rocket and my contact info,
+I hope someone calls eventually. In the meantime, the bulk of YikStik remains
+missing, and of course I did not achieve a successful level 3 certification.
+
+Lessons learned for next time are that tethering the deployment bag to the
+main chute instead of flying in a "free bag" configuration might have been a
+better choice, and it's kind of silly having two tracking transmitters in one
+of the two pieces of your rocket and none in the other...
+
+Ray LaPanse took some stunning photos of the launch. He will likely post
+better versions with color correction and so forth at some point, but in the
+meantime, I've put a few up on my
+[Garbee Rockets](http://www.gag.com/rockets/projects/yikstik/launch-photos)
+web site. She sure was a beauty!
+
projects / web / gag.com / commitdiff