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: | 2013-01-13 |
| Rocket Name: | DEFCON 1 |
| Kit Name: | Quasar One - DEFCON 1 {Kit} |
| Flyer's Name: | Rich DeAngelis |
| Motors: | C11-5 |
| Launch Site: | Penn Manor School Lancaster PA |
| Actual Altitude: | 200 Feet |
As this is still an almost new rocket, I was unsure how high it would go today. The weather was foggy but light winds, and I didn’t want to lose this in the low visibility. I expected it to be a low flight, but I was not sure.
When the motor lit, she took off well and straight, accelerating at 10.6 Gs, and averaging 5 Gs for the 6/10 second burn time. This gave the rocket a velocity of 65 mph and she coasted for the next 3.3 seconds to an apogee of 200 feet exactly. It then turned over and began to fall for the next 1.4 seconds. It was good that the ejection was short by 3/10 seconds, and it fired at 165 feet. The parachute was wrapped in Nomex and was a little tight, so it only came part way out of the body tube and the rocket fell fast at 22 mph. It did land in the wet grass and was not damaged. Flight time was only 9.8 seconds.
In spite of the low 200-foot flight, it drifted for about 300 feet upwind. The previous flight also had a deployment problem, that was due to the baffle. This time, the baffle was drilled-out, but the Nomex used to protect the ‘chute made it a tight fit in the rocket.
| Stage | Motor(s) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Estes C11-5 |
Sponsored Ads
 |
 |