Positive Ascent's 13th Flight, M1400

Positive Ascent had its 13th flight this past Saturday on a Cesaroni Pro75 M1400 Classic. It was an excellent "up part" followed by a not so excellent down part. The rocket ripped off the pad straight up as usual and after a nice long 5 second burn, it was out of site. After 20+ seconds of coasting, and a few seconds for the sound delay, we heard the apogee charges go off. After that, I relied on the tracker to tell us that it was drifting to the east. Eventually, the rocket was spotted descending under a tangled main at about 700 feet and a mile to the east. We watched for a few seconds until it disappeared quickly in what appeared to be the center of a massive woods on the east side of the valley.

We were able to drive within a half mile or so of where the rocket was and after an hour of inconsistent signals on the tracker in and out of corn fields and woods, we found it. The booster was on the ground in a narrow field and the rest was hanging conveniently low on a conveniently flexible tree. A gentle tug on the cord and the forward section, nose cone, and tangled mess of cord and parachutes slid gently down. (its worth noting that the nose cone carried the tracker. The fact that the nose cone and tracker were suspended 20 or so feet up is why the signal was doing unexpected things). Thanks to Russ Hughes for helping in the pad setup and the non-straightforward recovery effort.

The rocket was damage free and the altimeters averaged out to 10292.5 feet, and 761 miles per hour. The data reveals that the descent speed under the tangled main was 45 feet per second. Normal descent speed is 21 feet per second. No one saw the descent but I assume since this was the first drogueless flight, it was an unstable descent and when the main opened, the booster "flew through" the main, folding it around the recovery harnessing.

I set my camera up next to the pad for a cool liftoff video, and I took my favorite stills from that video. The stills reveal some nice mach diamonds and a good amount of field debris getting kicked up. Also, note how nice and long the burn on the motor was.

LIFTOFF VIDEO

I included this to show how remarkably close the landing site was to the M1540 flight.

What a lucky landing. The tree broke the fall without damage to the rocket.

The data stops at 600 feet or so because it landed way up on the hill.