Learning from the HPR community.

In going out to FAR I've seen a whole bunch of beautiful rocket projects crash and burn due to recovery failure. Less than 25% of the liquid flights I've seen have had successful recovery.
I don't want to repeat this so I set out to learn recovery from the HPR guys that routinely recover their vehicles. Part of that was building and flying my own level 3 HPR.

On Saturday I went out to the local Tripoli HPR launch and flew my L3 qualification flight.
I don't have a whole lot of pictures, but I have a few bits of data..Its a MadCow DX3 Massive Kit, I flew it on a CTI M1450 . The flight was a complete success 15587 ft altitude dual deployment with 24" drogue at apogee and a 96" main at 700 ft.


I learned some things about doing recovery in the process, some minor details, like swivels and shock cord sizing and protection. How to properly pack a parachute etc... hopefully I can transfer this knowledge to my next liquid project.

Quick tanks update...

John Added a 4" section in the tank mold and blew another bottle....The test was a success.
This adds 30% more volume and no more liner weight!
Based on best guess....this pushes the 1000PSI MR to close to 22 and 500 PSI close to 28.
We will have real fully finished tank numbers shortly.

More Thoughs on Crowd funding a single flight...

I've been thinking about a first effort on Crowd sourcing some development...
Here are my random thoughts on a kickstarter type project:

Title:
Unreasonable supporters cross the line,the Von Karmen line. (100km the edge of space...)

Supporter level: (Each level is cumulative IE each level gets everything from levels below)

1. $10.00 Named as a supporter of the effor, 7 day early access to all blog and media reports.
2. $50.00 Your business card gets flown to space and back.
3. $100.00 An I support unreasonable efforts polo/tee shirt.
4. $250.00 DVD of all raw and edited data, video and cad design documents from the flight.
5. $500.00 You get an invitation to come to all tests, and a personal individualized video thank you from the team members.
6. $1000.00 You get one of the actual GOPRO camera's and SD card that recorded the flight.
7. $2500.00 (Does not include a Gopro) You get to put your Logo on the rocket.
8. $20000.00 (Includes one Gopro) You get the complete vehicle that made the flight. (Or maybe 10K for the vehicle and 10K for the motor.)