On May 31st I launched my “Fanton 438 (EXL)” kit, rebuilt from last time and named Minuteman II. This was my second attempt at completing my Tripoli Rocketry Level 1 certification, my first attempt was not successful. Unfortunately, 2 seconds into flight it suffered a Rapid, Unscheduled, Disassembly. Root cause analysis was performed using high speed footage. The footage showed the motor deployed the rocket’s parachute far too early. Needless to say this was a bad outcome, and one that is difficult to prevent as the motor was a commercial, off-the-shelf variety.
For this event, I had to the same model motor, an H100W-14A. It was sourced differently however, from the club’s cache of cert motors, instead of the club’s motor seller. This was enough to ensure a successful certification launch. As you’ll see from the data, I was able to reach 800ft AGL and deployed parachutes at almost exactly the apogee.
For this launch I included fixes and improvements to my telemtry hardware and software. My radio receiver got 2 new upgrades: anti vibration Nyloc nuts and padding to prevent internal component separation. On the software side I improved my android app with a data export function and an audible ping when receiving a packet, which is useful for direction finding, and can always be silenced if wanted. Here is the launch video and below that is some photos from the rebuild process: