Latest Flight

[RiggerLee 61]

Finally got permission to post some video from the latest flight. It was only moderately successful. Loss of GPS was the reason the flight terminated early. So it was an early abort and only made it to like, 92,000 ft. We still had quite a bit of fuel on board so we were a bit fast on opening. With the new slider it was still under 5 G's. The body was less stable under the drogue then before because with the new cutter arrangement we are not locked into the center of the body as we were before. It's a trade off for redundancy with the two cutters. Interestingly the rocket body tended to oscillate under canopy. My best guess is that it was from the changes to the angle of the risers. For lack of a better term it changed the spring stiffness and I guess the drag on the fins just fit right in with the natural frequency.

You can use the hand in the video to move the view around. Up and down to look at the body of the rocket. It's a 20 inches in diameter. 34 ft long. Liquid fuel, Alcohol/LOX. Gimbaled engine. Cold gas ACS thrusters in four quadrants, high rate/low rate at the top and bottom.

You will see the launch. It is flying with just the gimbled motor. You will see it pick up some rotation. It reaches a high enough RPM that the computer decides to turn on the ACS and stop the roll. We try not to do that unless necessary to conserve He for tank pressurization. The roll stops. Eventually after 20 sec with out GPS the computer shuts down the engine and aborts the flight. During that 20 sec it was flying on the INU. Now the ACS comes on to maintain the stability of the rocket. Because it was such a low flight with the early abort the nose cone fires at appagy. and the ballute comes out. Then the Main opens. The AGU unstows the breaks by pulling in on the control lines and then lets out to full flight. It makes some turns flying back to the landing area. For some reason the AGU was chasing that oscillation under canopy. You can hear it. There is no gyro in the unit. The only explanation I have is that the GPS must have been far enough off center for it to pick up. Wamore can filter that out. On the down wind leg it burned out it's motors and was not able to turn base and final. It landed down wind with no flare in a skidding slide.

Although we had some small payloads on board it was mostly a test of the new control software. It produced some very good data for them to tune the control loops. The ACS worked well but was over active. They need to turn it down, change the setting between high and low rate, expand the dead band, etc. All in all we are calling it a successful test even though it was an early abort and did not make altitude. We got good control data and had an acceptable recovery with no significant damage to the rocket.

Thanks to all the usual charterers.

The canopy is a Strong Enterprises C-1200. They have been very supportive over the years and have provided us with all of our parachutes.

The AGU was built for us by Wamore. Mark has been a big supporter and has gone over and above traveling out to most of our launches to help us on sight. If you don't know them, they are the builder of the control units for all the military precision guided parachutes.

Thanks to Aerodyne. We have gone to cutters for the drogue release but their oval shaped rings are still used in the three ring releases for the break lines and have in the past flown to over 300,000 ft.

Those are the people you might know.

Z+

https://youtu.be/mXiNKGViTt4

Z-

https://youtu.be/JHJxgW5uAys

Their should be a more polished edited video out soon but I prefer the raw.

Enjoy.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[jonstark 8]

Yeah Buddy!
Bitchin!

[headoverheels 291]

Incredible video. I love how you can pan the video up and down during playback on Youtube.

[RiggerLee 61]

Those are the 360 Fly cameras. It's a fish eye lens over 180 deg.

https://www.360fly.com/shop/cameras

Sorry I forgot. I should have listed them as well. They have been working with us as well. We have two of their cameras on board. They just barely stick out on each side of the airframe in the payload section. It's like two wide eyes on the vehicle. We can turn them on remotely just by powering the cameras.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[NewGuy2005 51]

Incredible! Thanks!

[BillyVance 34]

RiggerLee

Z+

https://youtu.be/mXiNKGViTt4

Z-

https://youtu.be/JHJxgW5uAys

Clicky

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[RiggerLee 61]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHPeGH7t_QQ&feature=youtu.be

Here's an edited release. There was a couple of film crews out there. One from space port America and some other stuff going on. I'm not in the loop on any of this. I don't know if this is the final product or the first of several clips. It's mostly a bunch of B role. No flight footage from the rocket. Not even the rocket flying or landing under canopy although my ballute does make a brief cameo descending with the nose cone. So I have no idea what these people were thinking.

It does have shots of all the usual suspects. And it has the launch shot from the trailer. This is actually a very cool, Oh Shit! kind of shot. I'll explane. DO to some plumbing issues we are not getting as high of a pressure to the LOX at the engine as we would like. We have reworked the plumbing to fix that but at the time we decided to short load the LOX. So as a result of that decision the milk stand, big heavy blast deflector that the rocket sits on prior to launch, rather then being bolted down to the pad was sitting on a set of large scales to allow us to weigh the LOX. Well some one apparently forgot their fluid dynamics and did not think to secure the milk stand in any way. Well when 5,500 lb or so of thrust hits the graphite plates and turns 90 deg they forgot that you get 5,500 lb of force sideways on the stand. Well it went scooting along the pad till it hit the launch rail which bowed and flexed. In fact it flexed enough that it pulled very hard in the lower launch lug of the rocket. It was still in that lower section of the rail when the milk stand hit the launch rail. It actually ripped the lug off the rocket where it was welded in to the lower bulk head of the fuel tank. This imparted a big tug to the base of the rocket. Some thing you really do not want to do. That is why you see it take a big curve away from the launch rail. Then the engine cranked all the way to the stop on the gimble brings it back and a little past vertical to bring it back over the pad and then away it goes on it's marry way. But when you see all of our faces that is why we are all saying "Oh, shiiiit!!!" They politely edit that out and play mood music all through the video, but if you can read lips you'll see it. Actually it was a great, absolutely grade A+ test for the control system. You couldn't ask for a better small perturbation test right off the pad. Speaking of which if you want to see how we used to do that test, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the You tube page you'll see an old Armadillo aero space video that includes them doing rocket tug of war during a hover which is actually how we used to do it when testing the control system. It also includes shots of all the same people minus about 10 years. Flash backs.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[Phil1111 908]

RiggerLee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHPeGH7t_QQ&feature=youtu.be

Here's an edited release. There was a couple of film crews out there. One from space port America and some other stuff going on. I'm not in the loop on any of this. I don't know if this is the final product or the first of several clips. It's mostly a bunch of B role. No flight footage from the rocket. Not even the rocket flying or landing under canopy although my ballute does make a brief cameo descending with the nose cone. So I have no idea what these people were thinking.

It does have shots of all the usual suspects. And it has the launch shot from the trailer. This is actually a very cool, Oh Shit! kind of shot. I'll explane. DO to some plumbing issues we are not getting as high of a pressure to the LOX at the engine as we would like. We have reworked the plumbing to fix that but at the time we decided to short load the LOX. So as a result of that decision the milk stand, big heavy blast deflector that the rocket sits on prior to launch, rather then being bolted down to the pad was sitting on a set of large scales to allow us to weigh the LOX. Well some one apparently forgot their fluid dynamics and did not think to secure the milk stand in any way. Well when 5,500 lb or so of thrust hits the graphite plates and turns 90 deg they forgot that you get 5,500 lb of force sideways on the stand. Well it went scooting along the pad till it hit the launch rail which bowed and flexed. In fact it flexed enough that it pulled very hard in the lower launch lug of the rocket. It was still in that lower section of the rail when the milk stand hit the launch rail. It actually ripped the lug off the rocket where it was welded in to the lower bulk head of the fuel tank. This imparted a big tug to the base of the rocket. Some thing you really do not want to do. That is why you see it take a big curve away from the launch rail. Then the engine cranked all the way to the stop on the gimble brings it back and a little past vertical to bring it back over the pad and then away it goes on it's marry way. But when you see all of our faces that is why we are all saying "Oh, shiiiit!!!" They politely edit that out and play mood music all through the video, but if you can read lips you'll see it. Actually it was a great, absolutely grade A+ test for the control system. You couldn't ask for a better small perturbation test right off the pad. Speaking of which if you want to see how we used to do that test, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the You tube page you'll see an old Armadillo aero space video that includes them doing rocket tug of war during a hover which is actually how we used to do it when testing the control system. It also includes shots of all the same people minus about 10 years. Flash backs.

Lee

Thanks for the explanation. I thought gimbaled thrust corrected a off centerline launch condition.

[RiggerLee 61]

It does and it did correct for for it. That correction was through the gimbled thrust of the engine not aerodynamic in any way. It just takes time. That was a big jerk on the bottom of the rocket. It caused a big deviation, about 12 deg. That's big it's going to be a big woo-wo-wo of a curve to bring it not just back to vertical but back to center line. Proper damping involves a certain amount of over correction. The rocket has a lot of inertia in that axis. Depending on how much gimbal angle you have to work with it can take a bit of time to correct.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[Divalent 89]

video clicky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHPeGH7t_QQ

[RiggerLee 61]

Little bit of video from the third flight. For the record this is not what it is supposed to do. Let's just say that there was a slight control/guidance issue. It would have made a free flyer proud. It was more then a bit frightening to watch it go into a flat coning spin right above us. That's over 1,500 lb of fuel/lox ready to drop in the middle of us if the cone gets to flat and it stops accelerating upwards. It did get going and the fins finally did provide us with enough stability to clear the area. Appogy was about 13,000 ft. Engine shut down do to IIP, it was about to exceed it's 7 km circle. That translates to about 500 mph over the top. Nose cone fired shortly after that, a bit slower but not by much. Nose tears off. Ballute inflates and whips the rocket around. 10 sec delay till it releases the main. We were only going about 150 mph as it came out so not too bad. Sewing the lines into the risers ala security 150 worked well. I'm pleased with that. And the ballute and cutter system certainly proved them selves that day. One break did not unstow till the very end. But it seemed to be flying it's pattern about 1000 ft low. I think there might be an issue with the terrain soft ware. So it landed as it was turning to base with out flaring. Cracked the boat tail and broke lose one of the actuators for the engine. No biggy. Found the nose cone, broken. Spent three days in the dessert looking for the ballute, no joy. That's a bummer. 

 https://youtu.be/GlgN1bJWO48

 

https://youtu.be/-cTNevdDCN4

 

https://youtu.be/2qYF-0SwM94

Remember, you can use the hand to move the view around on the 360 fly cameras. So you can look down or up better the 180 deg. 

If the guys at Dekunu can figure out how to up load the flight data to their cloud I'll share the flight path as well. We had a couple of their altimeters on there for fun. There little units did good.

Lee

Edited July 13, 2019 by RiggerLee

[RiggerLee 61]

Leaving tomorrow for the desert. Next flight will be on Saturday 10/26. If you look on the Exos Aerospace Face book page there should be some type of live stream Sat morning. It will probable get off some time between 11:00 and 12:00 MT. Last one was... entertaining. Read that scary as shit. I'm hoping that this one will be much less exciting. We had a short but very good hover test. Simulator is looking much better. I'm feeling pretty good about this launch. I'm hoping this one will make altitude with no problems.

 

Lee

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

Oh my. 

There's some pretty cool stuff on that FB page.

https://www.facebook.com/exosaerosystech/

You have an interesting job. 

[RiggerLee 61]

Actually the coolest stuff was done back when we were known as Armadillo Arospace. if you search around on you tube for some of the old stuff that they used to do there are some great videos. th ey did a lot of lunar lander type designs. They played with a number of fuel combinations. They played with a lot of peroxide. They were making it in bulk distilling 90% in Russels garage by the barre l. 200 gal is a lot of go juice. Then they did a lot of bipropelle my work injecting different fuels into the chamber with the superheated decomposed peroxide. Think black arrow. Later won one of the lunar lander challenge and went on to do some other NASA contracts. 

 

Lee