Dwain Desbien – BALLS2012 – View from Blackrock

Dwain Desbien – BALLS2012 – View from Reno

Dwain Desbien flew to 49,360′ MSL (45,485′ AGL) at BALLS 2012 using GPS-1 onboard telemetry.

Bill Earls flew his Mach-4 experimental rocket at XPRS 2012 to 30’589 MSL (27,968′ AGL) at a top speed of Mach 3.16 using onboard GPS-2 for telemetry and tracking. Both RF and GPS lock were present during, before and after the flight. Recovery was immediate using coordinates shown on base-station display.

In the upper right, the track from Bill Earls rocket is shown from Reno. Bill Earl’s summarized the flight:

“On take off I could not have asked for a straighter flight. It was awesome to see that nice long burn. (7.6sec.) Mach 4 reached 27,897 ft at Mach 3.16 using the Real Flight Systems GPS unit we were able to track it all the way up and to touch down. Only problem was at around 4,000 ft. the booster broke free from the chute and came in pretty hard (The nylon strap broke) but the rest of it came in soft under chute. The rocket held an ARTS 2 and an LCX along with the RFS GPS unit.”

See here for more info.

Both the GPS-1 and the GPS-2 telemetry modules have been approved for TRA altitude reporting. In the GPS update it will be made explicit that TRA will accept either telemetry or locally recorded data.