MPEG movie of successful video/data test (1.4 M)
* *Saturday and Sunday were spent testing some of our systems. Saturday we had a big turn out over at Matt R.'s house (West Coast Payload Integration Facility). Ron, Matt M, Matt R, Glenn, Jim, Andrew, Steve, Brian, Roger, Mike, and Tim showed up to work.
We got the tower set up and the rocket loaded on. The main body recovery system was packed in and interface plate fitted.Work was done to get the recovery system prepped for the next days test. Igniters were made and pyrotechnics fitted. Last minute code was compiled and burned. ATV and data streams were tested. We found that it was a lot of work to get all of the systems fitted together. We wanted to try a separation test of the body sections using the backup DTMF system but ran out of time and had an anomalous "power up glitch" that made us rethink the test. We still have a few things to test but we made some good headway.
Sunday Matt and Brian drove to Washington to check on a potential site to drop test the recovery system. The place we found will work good and give us at least 4 seconds of free fall time.
The main parachute was also stress tested to see if it could safely handle the deployment speeds imposed on it by the drogue. The 8' chute handled the 35mph deployment speed just fine but it had difficulty with the 35mph impact with the fence post (see mpeg).
More test will be occurring soon and we will post the results as they happen.
Payload Systems :
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Andrew works diligently. |
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So is Glenn. |
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Bolting the payload together. |
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The Accelerometer/Gyro package. |
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Sensor package with Flight Computer. |
Recovery System :
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Brian tries to determine if they're serious. |
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The Bridge. (Safer to walk on the right) |