2-stager with APCP E28 booster
Ted Macklin and I have been talking complex staging using a composite booster for a couple years now, but I've been slow in getting stuff together for experimenting. Ted however has been working in the rocket shop to produce some interesting tests.
Saturday, we launched his 2-stager using an E28 reload as the booster staged to an E9 sustainer. As I understand, it was simply the E28-4, trimmed a hair - 1/16" - and gap-staged to the E9. Not sure if there was any fraction of BP ejection charge in the well, but the sustainer lit readily and continued on a flight mostly unseen by the three of us trying to track it.
While most of the sustainer flight was untrack=ed
we somehow managed to recover it intact. The booster had a couple cracked fins, but that happens with ordinary BP staging, so it's to be expected - ie, it's acceptable. The sustainer was spotted near a creek bottom thanks to its fluorescent red/orange chute where my new son-in-law retrieved it.
This was our low-tech approach to getting around the lack of high-thrust BP boosters. I'm looking forward to trying this with a couple of my birds built just for this purpose but as yet unflown. I'm hopeful I'll get some rocket time in the near future to play with this some more.
Kudos to Ted for his diligence and success on this project. Salute!
Doug
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