In this post, I’ll summarize the entirety of our launch day
this past from February 11th, 2017 in Argonia, KS.
Firstly, the weather in Oklahoma and Kansas is notoriously
unpredictable and unusual. On this mid-February day, we had a 73° high, mild winds, and
sunny skies. In February. It couldn’t
have been better. Oklahoma State University had twenty-seven students present
for this launch to watch, hang out, and fly rockets. We had seven members
attempting Level 1 certification flights, two of which would also be attempting
Level 2 certification, and with two club rocket launches, it was busy for us
all day long.
This launch was a first for me in that I wouldn’t be
attempting a certification flight, so that fact made for a more relaxed afternoon.
I began assembling the K700W we’d use for Steadfast
Steadley, our highest-flying rocket to date. While the rest of the team was
hanging out and preparing for certification flights, I got the recovery chutes set
for Steadfast Steadley and took a step
back to take lots of photographs. My roommate was generous enough to loan me
his Canon Rebel and tripod to take quality pictures, and I thoroughly enjoyed
capturing our team in action on the launch field.
In the early afternoon, we had Steadfast Steadley ready for flight. We rolled out the six-foot
tall, fifteen-pound rocket onto the launchpad and prepared three GoPros and a
Phantom drone to record launch footage.
We explained the significance of this rocket to the Launch
Control Officer, and he said a few words for Andrew as well before sending Steadfast Steadley into the sky. It was,
without a doubt, our most impressive launch ever, and we couldn’t have been
happier to honor Andrew with that flight. A more detailed post of this rocket
and flights is below.
An hour and a half later, we found the rocket almost a mile
and a half from the launchpad (despite dual-deploy, it still experienced
significant drift), and we determined that it reached 8515 feet of altitude and
805 miles per hour which was exceptionally exciting.
Throughout this time, all our members certified Level 1
successfully, and two of those completed their Level 2 towards the end of the
afternoon as well. For our final team launch of the day, we flew Dynamic System, a three-foot tall,
minimum diameter rocket that was lying around the lab when we moved in. We flew
on an I500T just for fun, and while we didn’t have an altimeter on board, we
expected it to reach Mach 1.2 and fly to 4000 feet which we’ll assume did in
fact happen. Due to the exceptionally fast burn time, the rocket practically
exploded off the pad, tearing into the sky, providing shouts of “Oh, shit!”
from unnamed members our team.
With the launches finishing minutes before the waiver
closed, we helped Kloudbusters pack up their equipment and took final photos
with Steadfast Steadley before calling
it a day. On our way to Stillwater, we stopped at Taco Bell to eat and then
headed home. As we drove south, I snapped a picture out the car window of the
open Oklahoma sky where the sunset matched the paint scheme of Steadfast Steadley. It was the perfect
way to cap off a perfect day of flying.
We are still working on videos from Saturday, but photos are
below. I’ll share video links as they become available. Thank you for reading,
and I look forward to sharing more of our endeavors soon!
Comments
Post a Comment