Saturday, the sixth of April, 2024 @ 8:00AM to 12:30PM

Riley, Soheil, Sukhraj, Dave, and I were at this launch. Qualifying flights were due on Monday April 8th, and Sunday was supposed to be pretty rainy almost the whole day so this was basically our last chance.

• 1-2mph winds in the morning, it became windier later but never bad.
• Small amounts of rain off and on, but we were able to just wait until the rain stopped to launch.
• 45°F.
• 68% relative humidity.
• 30" pressure.
• After the laust launch where it fell off, Sukhraj cut and attached a new fin, and then I filleted it with some gray 24 hour epoxy afterward because it felt kind of loose.
• New 3D printed blue PLA transition with a thicker outer rim on the bottom, and with both that and the attachment point going in deeper looking in from the bottom (higher upward from the base) and with 100% infill.
• We tried to shorten the length of the parachute cords so it wouldn't be as effective because we were staying in the air too long.
• New altimeter battery.
• 622g mass.
• Cesaroni Pro29 57F59 single grain.


• First flight: 4½ second delay.
• First flight: Foam packed really tightly around the egg on all sides.


• Second flight: 4½ second delay.
• Second flight: Foam packed a bit more loosely around the egg and only on the top and bottom.


• Third flight: We went to Dave's house after the second flight and reattached the fin that came off, sanding it down to the right size so the epoxy would work better, previously it hadn't been attached well to begin with and the two parts on the outside were also pushing the long main peice inside away, so that it couldn't properly touch and stay on the motor mount tube on the inside of the rocket. We just five minute epoxied it back on and also preventatively filleted the third fin that hadn't yet fallen off with some extra epoxy.
• Third flight: 4½ second delay.


• Fourth flight (Qualifying): At this point we pretty only had two motors left, so we needed to take a qualifying flight right now if we wanted to have any chance of making it to nationals.
• Fourth flight (Qualifying): 4 second delay.

Results:

Some of these results I'm not completely sure on, I don't know what happened to some of the results recorded but I for some reason only have like ⅔ of the results and nobody else has them so some of this is just from memory from a while ago.

• First flight: 686' apogee.
• First flight: 35ish second duration.
• First flight: We don't really know why the rocket did so badly but it did also curve a lot for some reason and went into an adjacent field and smoked maybe more than usually while coming off the launch rail.
• First flight: The egg also broke, I originally thought it was because the foam was packed so tight around the egg in every direction rather than just on top and bottom like I had been doing before.


• Second flight: 822' apogee.
• Second flight: 47 second duration.
• Second flight: The egg broke again I have no idea why.
• Second flight: A different fin fell off, I think they were poorly attached initially, this time I was able to easily recover it.


• Third flight: 877' apogee.
• Third flight: The rocket flew up very straight, better than ever before, maybe because now the fins were more rigidly attached.
• The egg finally didn't break.


• Fourth flight: DQ - The egg broke again unfortunately.
• Fourth flight: 737' apogee.

The egg might have started breaking we think because over time the foam got more compressed, the whole time we were just using this old torn up sponge someone took from the ceramics class. Maybe the Costco Kirkland Signature white eggs had a bad batch with thinner shells than normal, we don't really know for sure why it happened. Protecting the egg was an afterthough, but previously this had been sufficient so we weren't worried about it.

Overally we had some pretty good flights this season like the 814', 827', and 822' but were also unlucky when qualifying, for some reason our rocket is quite inconsistent from one flight to the next sometimes, we also kind of started late in the season and were running out of time, it was everyone's first year. The rocket was also not constructed very well, especially by the end, it kept getting worse over time and was pretty uneven. We learned a lot and hopefully can do better next year, already a lot of new people signed up for the club for next year at storm night.