This tall kit is originally supplied with a single long body tube. Since it was damaged in shipping, I cut out the crushed section and spliced together two smaller tubes by making a long, 10" payload section out of the upper third. These tubes had to be sized exactly as the original, because the supplied full-body wrap decals needed to be used. This kit came with a lot of high quality parts, including a foil-lined motor tube, a parachute swivel, cloth-covered shock cord, matching aqua-colored heavy plastic parachute and of course all those decals. It takes 24mm D and E engines. I added an ejection baffle to this rocket.
| Flight Date: | 2012-09-01 |
| Rocket Name: | DEFCON 1 |
| Kit Name: | Quasar One - DEFCON 1 {Kit} |
| Flyer's Name: | Rich DeAngelis |
| Motors: | C11-5 |
| Expected Altitude: | 380.00 Feet |
| Wind Speed: | 10.00 mph |
| Launch Site: | Fort Indiantown Gap, PA |
| Actual Altitude: | 275.00 Feet |
This was the first ever test flight of the new DEFCON 1. Several remarked that this was a good looking rocket, and I hoped it would stay that way. The winds were dying down a bit, and I felt that the higher impulse, relatively light weight and long length would keep this rocket from being affected by the winds much.
The motor ignited and she lifted off the rod and burned for 7/10 seconds, flying fast and straight, reaching a respectable speed of 81 mph. The readings for acceleration indicated how little the winds affected the flight, with the peak Gs at 10.9 and the average acceleration at 5.3 Gs. These numbers were similar to a Big Bertha of about the same weight. The DEFCON then bled off the 81 mph speed in the next 3.8 seconds, reaching an apogee of 275 feet above.
Ejection fired a bit early at 4.2 seconds, but it was near perfect for this flight, as the DEFCON only dropped 2 feet in the last 4/10 seconds before the parachute popped at 273 feet. The color-coordinated parachute filled with air and the rocket came down at 8 mph, landing about 120 feet downwind. Total flight time was 27 seconds. A perfect first flight. The altitude was lower than the kit card or the apogee website estimated, claiming 366 and 411 feet respectively.
| Stage | Motor(s) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Estes C11-5 |
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