> At Black Rock 8 this last weekend, I spent quite a long
> time setting up the wiring and electronics for my first-ever
> Hypertek hybrid flight. I had:
> PML Tempest (which I now feel is poorly designed)
> Black Sky timer in the Tempest's nose cone
> Pratt RC ejection in the electronics bay above the motor
> The poor design of the PML Tempest requires that you either
> A) totally disassemble the rocket on the pad to arm the deeply-
> buried electronics or B) arm the internal electronics before
> you go up. Silly me: I figure "all the RC stuff is impounded,
> who's going to set this thing off?"
> When everything was ready to go, somebody in the next car over
> keyed their CB as they drove away (we heard them do it). This
> immediately triggered my RC ejection while the rocket sat on
> my lap. My added caution thankfully prevented injury, but I
> now had to START ALL OVER wiring and prepping.
> An hour later, I'm out on the Hypertek pad, disassembling the
> whole damn rocket in order to arm everything - out in the hot
> sun.
> Immediately upon ignition, the Pratt RC ejects again, and my
> first-ever hybrid flight is a large twirling circle of flame.
> Amazingly nothing is damaged, but the flight was an utter flop.
> THe result is this:
> A) The Pratt RC is useless around CB traffic
> B) The Pratt RC is useless around a Hypertek launch system
> C) I wasted a lot of time because I thought it'd be cool to
> have RC ejection
> D) Next time I'll just use the Black Sky timer, the Pratt RC
> is not usable for much of what I do at all. A lot of
> money down the drain.
> Mark Jeghers--
I'm sorry you had to spend all that money for the useless R/C system. At
LDRS, a realy nice rocket I can't name, sat on the pad for OVER 5 HOURS.
Sat there for at least 4 racks because the dame ejection charge pop'ed
everytime someone breathed. It never even got to fly!
One of the first things I notice when I got to the field the first day,
was all the Pratt Hobbies control boxes in peoples hands walking around.
My first thought was, "Oh great, stuff will be pop'ing all over the
place."... Sure enough. It got so bad that on the next day, they would
not let you fly ANYTHING untill you turned in all of your control boxes to
the safe area at the RSO table.
Most rockets, like yours, are not "electronis friendly" yet. It cost more
money to make a rocket that has a simple hatch/door to an electronics bay.
I guess one way to enhance a system like Pratt Hobbies type systems, is
to encode the signal, so that the reciver would know if the signal was
true or false, and sent by you. I believe NASA encryps like this. That
way, no one can tell the Space Shuttle to open the payload doors during
desent! Looks like Pratt type systems would have this already, for what
people are paying for them anyway. What are we talking about here, one chip?
By no means am I an expert. This just sounds like a common sence type of
problem easly fixable by people in the know.
--
Henry Oeser...NAR# 65336. TRA# 4782. NOVAAR #205
"We Need A Bigger Boat..."