HELL CAT II - FORTH FLIGHT - GO

Ok, this this another attempt of flying this rocket. We lost our NEFAR / Bunnell field, after a few weeks still no words from President and officers. This really sucks big time. Hope weather is still great in GRITS, Ga. Lots of NEFAR members will be there for sure. Tim will stay two days there and will, as usual, launch a bunch of rockets. I will be going only one day... there is still the wife to balance my weekend properly, haha. Oh well, it will be fun in Georgia. Will check out the rocket later, have 4 days off starting from Thursday, November 22.... Hope to fly on my skidmark that I have for a few months now..

Update 11/21/2018 - Electronics and radio's / blue tooth / RTX / tested, all great working. Working in the lower Channels now, like #14, no issues, had again issues with Higher channels like #15.. Will do more tests in the next few days.

Update 11/22/2018 - Making a new cover/holder for the RTX so that the radio antenna fits next into that same bay. Tested other high frequency channels but they all seems to have an issue with the RTX signal and they shutdown and restart and even reset the RTX, so now I'm just fine with channel #14. Stratologgers tested, they are still good to go for this flight.

Update 11/23/2018 - Charging and checking all my stuff now, might bring a back up rocket as well.... Maybe making charges for that, will see how it goes. Texted Shawn to see if Saturday is a good day to launch. It has been raining all night here. Hoping for the best.

Got in contact with Shawn and according to him, The weather is improving and Saturday looks good. Prepped two rockets and have the red Head as a backup prepped. Will fly Hell Cat on the J295 and keep the K454 SK for the Red Head, that rocket needs a sparking motor anyway to do justice ! Car is all packed up and ready to roll.

Update 11/24/2018 - Launch Day - Left very early the house in he morning, like around 7 AM... To be on the field around 10 AM, left with great smooth open weather in Florida but as soon we drove into Georgia the sky closed up more and more and more fog started to show. It was so bad at times that you could not even see the top of the light poles.. When we came at the field there was fresh picked cotton all over and the round was wet from an early drizzle that night, but good enough for a launch day. The fog stayed low all morning and I was ready to go home. Could not see any opening for a 3 K+ launch !! Waver started at 200 feet and went up to 1000 feet and sporadically to 2000 feet, not enough ! But some guys had big rockets with small motors and that would do that morning. Tim launched his Lumpy a few times and stayed just under the cloud base..It looked that there was on opening coming up and I got excited and started prepping again, Florence was taking pictures.. But the bright sky closed up again! I just wanted to go home at this point and stayed some time taking more pictures of the launches.... some fun...Around 1:30 PM it started to brighten up more and I asked the LCO for the waiver, and he said well around 3000 feet, I said ok good enough, I ran to grab my rocket, paid for one day launch to Jorge and got approved to launch. Got assigned for pad #11 and loaded the rocket. A bit of an angle to make sure it landed on the field, other were drifted to the trees all the time, so I just wanted to make sure.. Stratologgers were beeping out nice and correct, so all was ready to launch ! The rocket was prepped like hours before so I did not care if the phone was still recording or not. I just wanted to get that rocket into the air and have some data. Launch was great, as soon as the rocket left the rial it angled more that the few degrees that I gave the rail, but still going up fine. It disappeared in the fog/clouds for a moment, but we could follow it on the RTX and it came out of the clouds exactly what the RTX showed. It was already under main chute. According Tim, and following the RTX hand held display he said it descended fast... Will check the stratologgers data and see if I can spot some irregularity.. To me it looked all fine and the drogue and main were deployed fully and descent was perfect.. We had to walk like 1800 feet for the recovery, not to far actually, nice walk low grass... No damage. As soon as I launches the sky closed up again and the weather got bad. According Tim, after I left the sky opened up again a bit, but while putting his rocket on the pad it started to close up again.. Really frustrating launch day, especially when you want to launch a bit higher...

Fact is: I took the radio out, while prepping I got the same problem with the low channel #14 as I had with the high frequency channels. The RTX goes crazy and shuts down and restarts over and over again. I was more comfortable with the RTX than on the radio/phone/Bluetooth combo. Will take a closer look at this, because before all worked fine.

Also after hours prepping and not flying... the phone still worked and gave me a nice video recording of the flight. Nice surprise ! But no data was recorded. There seems to be an interruption at the end of the video so I think that it is not complete so no data was made..

Because the day was a bit funny because of he weather and fog it was successful. Thank you Florence for making those great pictures and being there. Will download the date tomorrow and investigateit a bit.

Update 11/25/2018 - Inspected and downloaded the stratologgers data. Normal descent !!! Great altitude also.

Update 11/26/2018 - Landing coordinates: 31.281930, -83.354668

The last 30 Launch & Recovery pictures are taken by Tim.