| Date: | 25th May 2019 |
| Location: | Whalan Reserve, Australia |
| Conditions: | Sunny, wind calm, 24C |
| Members: | PK, John K and GK |
Today we did a number of flights with the Horizon deployment mechanism. This was fitted to the top of one of the Axion rockets. Although we have done lots of ground tests with the deployment mechanism, and at least one flight on a Horizon sustainer, we wanted to get more flights out of the system to see how it behaved in flight before putting it on the main rocket. We did not put the camera or altimeter inside the nosecone in just in case the rocket crashed or hung up on a tree. We mounted a camera underneath the deployment mechanism looking up so that we could see it activate. We used a slightly smaller parachute too, because the rocket is lighter than the Horizon rocket and so we didn't want it to drift away.
We flew it couple of times with the 22mm nozzle to get higher acceleration to see if there were any issues with it. Although this still isn't as high an acceleration as the rocket will experience with the Horizon rocket, at least it is representative of a high-G launch. The weather conditions were ideal and so the rocket went straight up, deployed the parachute right at apogee and the rocket landed well on both flights.
For the third flight we flew the rocket with a 9mm nozzle and foam because the sky was nice and blue. The rocket again flew to apogee and deployed the parachute.
So all three tests were successful today which we are happy about. This gives us more confidence that the mechanism will work on the Horizon flights.
Here are some photos from the day.
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