December 1, 2024 @ 3:00PM to 4:00PM

I don't know why we wanted to launch so late, but we only had time for one flight before it would be too dark.

• It was a gorgeous day out. There were hardly any clouds, <2mph winds, clear skies. This new field Sukhraj found (couldn't continue using last year's field) had an amazing view of Mt. Baker today.
• 47°F.
• 72% relative humidity.
• 30.21" pressure.
• 580g with motor (Openrocket said we should've been at 509). In trying to avoid the fin falling off problems of last year, our rocket was built more securely, but this may have been a source of additional weight. There were likely several causes of this extra weight. It mostly affected the lower section.
• Perfectflite Pnut altimeter (upgrade from our Firefly last year).
• Quest/Aerotech F41-5W motor. We went with a single use motor because we didn't want to commit yet to an expensive case and reloadable system before we had much idea if it would be right.
• Supposedly 1¾ cal. stability, though this was likely actually slightly lower due to the bottom being heaver than Openrocket said. We felt like this was a good number to go for because it wouldn't be dangerously low if we were off (like what happened) but not super high like the problems we had at 4 last year.
• Because the rail buttons are on the top this year, the usable length of our rail is kind of short. If the winds weren't so calm, Dave said it would probably have been too dangerous to launch. We're planning on attaching a pipe at the bottom so we'll be able to get more length out of it with how the fins are currently just stopped by the stand.

Results:

• The motor sputtered for a couple seconds before properly launching. This might have caused us to go lower than we hoped, but we couldn't be sure and couldn't do a second flight with the short amount of daylight remaining.
• 711' apogee.
• 44 second duration for the upper section
• The lower section landed before the top, opposite of what Openrocket expected. This was probably just because the weight in there was much higher than anticipated. Both sections hit the ground a little bit fast but it's kind of necessary.
• Both eggs survived with the new foam that's perfectly molded to the eggs.

We're pretty happy with this for our first flight of the season. Today was a great day to launch although next time we shouldn't launch so late. Our plan is to launch again next weekend with the pipe so we have more length for our rail. We'll use the same motors again and just see if the motor sputtering was the problem and we'll actually be fine or if we just need some stronger motors. We still have three more left to test with. This is 2½ months before our first launch last year so we should have a lot more time to get everything working. Altimeter data: 1.pf2, Openrocket model (weight discrepancy): like that.ork

Photos will be added later