On Saturday we got up and left for FAR at 6am. We stopped for a sit down breakfast at 8 am.
We got to FAR at 10:15 We missed the Garvey space launch by 20min. Breakfast so was not worth it.
Historically every liquid test/launch conductor says they will go at 9 am and inevitably it happens around 12 or 1. This was a relaunch of the vehicle they flew two weeks ago and everything went according to plan. It jsut means I'll have to get up earlier next time I go to FAR.
For our test we broke off the fuel feed fitting, probably from all the handling in the last two weeks. We have stopped bringing the kitchen sink with us so we had no spare. A 1.5 hour drive into California city and back nets us a usable fitting and a lunch in air conditioning.
We were very careful in loading propellants to get proper wieghts for the oxidizer and fuel going in and leftover fuel coming out after the test. This should allow me to calculate a good ISP number combined with the load cell data.
The test ran for several minutes and from my perspective was perfect. The motor had a bit more hum than last time, I suspect the cat pack might be getting loose from being compressed, and cooled, but it operated perfectly.
Another test on the May 7th (the next FAR day) and I'll declare the cat pack issue resolved and start working on motor tuning for max ISP.
