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Starfire was launched on Sunday morning,
September 24, at XPRS 2006 under almost ideal weather conditions.
There was a clear blue sky and calm winds. It all came together on this flight!
Everything about this flight went very well.
Starfire is 12.5 feet long,
7.7 inches in diameter and was 80 pounds "ready to fly". It was launched on a
total
of seven motors. Total installed impulse was
11,245 NS. This put Starfire into the complex "N" impulse class and
required it be launched from the 1500 foot away cell.
The main motor was an
Animal Motor
Works M2200 "Skidmark." After the Skidmark burned out,
at 4 seconds into the flight, four
Aerotech
J350 motors were ignited. Then after those burned out, at 7
seconds into the flight, the last two
Aerotech
J570 motors were ignited. |
This was not the first time
Starfire has successfully flown on seven motors but it was the first time it
flew on seven that included the Skidmark. This made for an especially
exciting flight to watch.
Starfire cruised up to an apogee at
8,416 feet and deployed two large parachutes for a picture perfect
recovery. It landed safely away from the flight line and suffered no
damage from the flight.
Lots of photos and videos from this flight are
presented on the page below. There are also lots of other photos and
videos from other Starfire launches at these links:
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Photo by Vern Knowles |
Starfire has a central 75mm
motor mount and six 38mm outboards. Here the motors have
already been built and installed. The igniters for the outboard
motors have also been wired to the onboard timer and the switches set to
electrically disconnect them from the timer and to shunt them for safety.
The next step is to install them into the motor cores. To do this the
igniters are taped to some thin pieces of stiff piano wire to hold them at
the top of the outboard motor cores during flight. |
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The piano wires can
be seen as they exit the motor nozzle and bend in a right angle to
fit into a slot in the rear bulk plate along with the igniter wires.
The rear retainer plate goes on next to cover all this. |
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The igniter wires
need to be protected from heat and exhaust from the adjacent motors.
Otherwise, if one motor lights first, it might disable an adjacent
igniter. I cover them with modeling clay to protect them.
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The last step is to
tape over the rear openings in the motor retainer plate with
aluminum foil tape. This is particularly useful for protecting
from blast plate "splash back" from the big central skidmark motor. |
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Photo by Tsolo T.
Tsolo from RocketShots! © 2006 |
The onboard camcorder is
turned-on and installed into the lower payload bay just before stacking
the rocket on the launch pad. The camcorder looks out through a hole in
the side of the booster coupler. The main body tube slides over this
coupler and has a mirror mounted that allows the camcorder to look down
the side of the rocket during launch. At apogee the body tube
separates from the booster allowing the camcorder to look straight out to
view the horizon and surrounding scenery during descent on parachute.
The camcorder used here is
a Sanyo HD1 Xacti. (model VPC-HD1) The beauty of this
camcorder is that it does not use tape. It records directly to a
Secure Digital Memory card. This is much more tolerant of
acceleration and high vibration than a tape based camcorder. This
particular model can also record in HD video. (1280x720 pixels)
Link to
camcorder setup |
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Photo by Tsolo T.
Tsolo from RocketShots! © 2006 |
After the booster section
was in place it was time to mate it with the main body tube.
At this point the launch
rail was rotated into the vertical position and it was time for the
pre-launch portrait photograph. |
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Photo by Oksanna Pope |
Photo by Oksanna Pope |
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Photo by Rick Clapp |
Installing the igniter into
the main motor is one of the last steps.
After the main motor
igniter was installed it was time to arm the air-start timers, remove the
safety shunts on the air-start igniters and retreat to a safe distance to
enjoy the launch. |
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Photos by Vern Knowles |
This is an animated set of
still images taken by my Canon 20D digital camera from a tripod set up
close to the launch pad. The camera captures photos at five frames
per second.
Click on the photos to see
the full set of 14 images and in a larger size. (Warning: 2MB file size.)
This is a good look at the
liftoff but of course it is missing the sound. Some great launch
videos with sound are further down on this page.
The shower of titanium
sparks spit out by the skidmark motor can be seen pretty well in this
animated sequence.
Link to full size 14 image animation
(2MB file) |
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Photo by Oksanna Pope |
Photo by Oksanna Pope |
Photo by Oksanna Pope |
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How sweet it is!
A shower of sparks rained down from the
liftoff of Starfire.
The thrill of being relatively close to this launch is beyond words. The
whole setup crew at the away cell was treated to a really spectacular
liftoff. We were well away from the pad but still plenty close
enough to really enjoy the sound and sparks from the skidmark. Once
you experience one of these motors it will become an instant favorite.
Right after main motor burnout the four J350's
lit and gave Starfire another good boost. After those burned out, the two
J570's gave it another good kick. Both parachutes deployed right at apogee
as planned and I started to breath again. This was not the
highest or the fastest flight at XPRS but from liftoff to touch down this
was a very exciting flight. What a thrill! It was
a tremendous amount of work to make it happen but this was the pay off and
it was well worth it! |
Photo by Tsolo T.
Tsolo © 2006 |
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Photo by Tsolo T.
Tsolo from RocketShots! © 2006 |
This photo shows the two
smoke trails left hanging in the sky after Starfire had ignited the first
and second set of air-started motors.
I stood there for a few
moments watching and reveling in the joy of what I had just seen but then
quickly jumped into my car and started driving out to where it was going
to land. I opened the sunroof and at times was driving across the playa at
about 50 mph while looking up through the sunroof and admiring Starfire
coming down so nicely on chute. It was absolutely fun chasing it
down like this on the lake bed without having to worry about running into
something. I could just watch and enjoy. I got to very near to where
it was going to land, stopped the car and got out to stand there and enjoy
watching it touch down. The landing was nominal and there was no
damage anywhere.
This was the fifteenth
flight of Starfire and perhaps its best yet. Everything about this flight
went really well. It reached 8,416 feet. |
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For this flight I wanted to
capture a new view of the liftoff from high up looking down on the launch
pad. I custom built a super tall tripod for this purpose and mounted a
high speed still camera and a camcorder on it. The upper left photo
shows me (dangerously) standing on a ladder while setting up the cameras.
I wrapped them in aluminum foil to protect them from the Skidmark's
hot metal sparks. The upper right photo shows the two cameras with
the tripod boom extended to its full 18 foot height. |
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Photos by Vern Knowles |
The animated sequence at the left is from the still image camera taking
seven frames per second at 1/12,000 shutter speed. Click on the animated
image to see the full size version with all 11 frames in it.
(Warning: 2.4 MB file size.)
This gives a good view of the intensity and amount of hot metal sparks
that got rained down onto the launch pad!
Link to full size 11 image animation
(2.4 MB file)
This animation is nice but
it is missing the sound. A video recording from the high mounted
camcorder is presented just a little further down this page. Check
it out! |
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Photo by Vern Knowles |
Photo by Vern Knowles |
Photo by Vern Knowles |
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The "click-click-click"
sound in the video above is from a 35mm film camera mounted next to the
camcorder. Just before launch the film camera is triggered to start
taking photos at seven frames per second. The still photos in
the animation presented just above were taken by that camera.
If you are having trouble
viewing these videos, then click here for help. |
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Split Screen Flight Video #1
Video by Greg Fannin, Shon Heiner and Vern Knowles |
This video shows the view
from the flight line but also includes a pad cam video insert and a video
insert from the onboard camera all synchronized together. There is
also a great piece of video at the end that shows the touch down of
Starfire from about 100 feet away. Check it out!
View
High Resolution
MPEG2 version
(35 MB)
View
QuickTime version
(41 MB)
View Low
Res
Windows Media Player version
(9 MB)
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Onboard Flight Video
Video by Vern Knowles |
This video was captured by
the onboard camcorder inside Starfire. Unfortunately, I accidentally
set the zoom a little too high on this camera and consequently it did not
include the back end of the rocket and the fins into the field of view
like I wanted. There was also quite a bit of rapid spinning going on
during parachute descent. However, all in all, it's still fun to
watch.
View
High Resolution
MPEG2 version
(41 MB)
View
QuickTime version
(44 MB)
View Low
Res Windows Media Player version
(4 MB)
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This is one frame from the
onboard flight video. It shows the XPRS flight line far below.
A short whiff of smoke from
the air-start motors can also be seen hanging in the air in the upper left corner of the
photo. |
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The photo above is the view that Starfire had
of me as it came in for the landing. I had driven my car across the
lakebed while watching Starfire on parachute through my open sun roof.
As I got close, I stopped the car and got out to stand there and enjoy the
landing. This was the closest I have ever been to one of my high
power rocket landings. It was certainly fun. Too bad they all can't
go this smoothly. |
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Photo by Vern Knowles |
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Photo by Vern Knowles |
Starfire puts out two big
parachutes at apogee. A
SkyAngle Cert-3 XXL
supports the weight of the booster section and half the body tube. A
Rocketman R14 also
carries half the weight of the body tube along with that of the nosecone
and camera module. |
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Photo by Vern Knowles |
Photo by Vern Knowles |
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It worked!
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