Starfire was flown at the
Desert Heat launch on Sunday morning on an
Animal Motor
Works M3000 "Super Tiger" motor plus three
Aerotech
J350 motors that were air-started following a short coast period after
main motor burn-out. This was the ninth flight of Starfire and the
second time it had flown on an M3000. It carried a mini-DV camcorder
in the aft payload bay and a digital still camera in the forward payload
bay. The on-board video from this flight is available further
down this page.
All three air-starts fired
successfully and it was real obvious from the ground that they gave a big
boost to the velocity of Starfire. The video shows that they did not
all ignite exactly simultaneously but the trajectory of Starfire remained
on a perfect straight line. The on-board timer was set to 3.5
seconds. The on-board video shows that one J350 ignited at 4.0
seconds after liftoff, the second at 4.4 seconds and the third at 4.8
seconds. The air-starts were lit with
Daveyfire 28F igniters dipped in
Firestar pyrogen. The timer is a
MissileWorks PET2 timer.
Starfire reached 8159 feet
on this flight. At LDRS-24 it reached only 5321 feet while flying on
the exact same motor combination except that at LDRS-24 the J350
air-starts did not ignite. So it appears that the three J350 motors
added 2838 feet to the peak altitude. The liftoff weight of Starfire
was about 72 pounds.
Starfire landed 0.94 miles
from the launch pad and was recovered in perfect condition. A
special thank you goes out to August Degner for helping me retrieve this
rocket from the sagebrush. August also worked as cameraman for the ground
video. I believe this was the first high power launch he has
attended. Thank you very much August!
View other photos of Starfire here.
View Starfire construction details here.
