As far as we could see from the ground the drogue deployment at apogee went just fine.  Angelfire began to descend.  At 1000 feet to go, the nosecone was ejected just like it was supposed to be, but there was no sign of the main chute.  Apparently it was not forced out of the body tube by the ejection charge like normal.  At 800 feet to go, the backup ejection charge went off and the main chute was ejected.  However, it seemed to take quite a while to get itself unfurled and inflated. There were some tense moments as Angelfire was getting very close to the ground.  Finally the main chute blossomed and Angelfire swung in under it just a few seconds before touch down.   Angelfire landed with no damage but it was a very close call.  

Angelfire carried its usual assortment of electronics on this flight.  The drogue and main parachutes were deployed by two Missile Works RRC2 altimeters.  There was also an ARTS recording altimeter on-board to record the entire flight profile using both a barometric sensor and an accelerometer.  Angelfire also carried my homebrew GPS downlink system in the nosecone and was transmitting information to the ground during the flight. There was also a Walston radio transmitter at 216 MHz in the nosecone for backup "just in case".  However, it was not needed for this flight.

Liftoff of Angelfire on an M1939 motor.

This is an animated set of still images taken by a digital camera close to the launch pad.  Each image was captured at 1/8000 sec and the time between successive images is 200ms.

Click on the animation to see the full set of 15 images and in a larger size.

Link to full size animation

Launch Video

Liftoff of Angelfire as viewed from the flight line at XPRS 2006.   Turn it up load and enjoy the launch!

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Pad Cam Video

Pad Cam view of the Angelfire liftoff.

View High Resolution MPEG2 version     (8 MB)

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View Low Res  Windows Media Player version  (1.4 MB)

This was the eighth flight of Angelfire.  It landed 1.03 miles from the launch pad.

Everything was neatly laid out when I arrived at the landing site.

Six pages of analysis of the data from the ARTS recording altimeter is presented below.  You can click on each page individually to see an image of it, or you can get all six pages at once in a higher resolution PDF document at the link below.

The two MissileWorks altimeters reported altitudes of 15,133 and 16,018 feet.  This gives an average of 15,576 feet.  The ARTS altimeter reported the peak altitude as 16,192 feet based on the accelerometer and 15,015 feet based on the pressure sensor.  The largest difference between all these readings is 6.4%.   This particular ARTS altimeter seems to always report a slightly higher altitude based on the accelerometer than on the pressure sensor.  These results are also nearly identical to the flight Angelfire made at XPRS 2005 on the same motor.   Those results can be found here.

The MissileWorks altimeters were responsible for firing the ejection charges.  It appears that the apogee charge was possibly fired a little early.  A glitch in the ARTS acceleration data indicates the apogee change was fired at about 14,678 feet while still traveling 189 mph.  This was slightly before the ARTS detected apogee on either the barometric or inertial data.  However, it is not possible to know for sure if the MissileWorks fired early or if the ARTS detected apogee late.   Visually from our ground view the apogee deployment timing looked good but of course it was pretty high and some what difficult to judge.  This early deployment is also exactly the same as was indicated by the data from the flight in 2005.   Therefore, I'm inclined to believe the ARTS is probably detecting apogee a little late.  If deployment was as early as indicated on these two flights, then I would have expected to see some signs of damage.  Nether flight showed any sign of damage from such a high speed deployment so they were probably not really going that fast at the apogee deployment.

Maximum acceleration was 8.6 G's.  Peak velocity was exactly 1000 ft/sec (682 mph).  Angelfire reached apogee in 29 seconds.  After that, it descended on the drogue chute for 2.9 minutes at 91 ft/sec and then fired the main chute deployment charge at 1,089 feet.  The back-up ejection charge was fired at 749 feet.  The main chute was very slow to get inflated but finally did so at 110 feet.  This was less than 3 seconds before touch down.  This was a very close call!  Total flight time was 3 minutes and 27 seconds.

The camera in front is a Canon 20D 8-Mpix digital camera with a fast 50mm F1.4 lens.  It can be set to capture images at 1/8,000 sec and shoot five frames per second.

My other primary camera is a Minolta Maxxum-9  35mm film camera also with a fast 50mm F1.4 lens.  That camera can run at 1/12,000 sec and shoot seven frames per second.   I shoot FujiFilm Provia 100F professional color slide film in it.

Click here to view Wildfire flight at XPRS 2006