Fineas Flight 1 - Raw Video (Patreon)

Hey Patrons! Thanks for the patience with yesterday's stream - I can't believe video cut out RIGHT at launch... Luckily, we have plenty of angles of the flight here, hopefully that makes up for it a bit.

I haven't taken a close look at the data yet, and we'll do that breakdown in a few days or so, but my current guess is that the connection between the servos/actuators and the fins was slipping in flight. This sorta invalidates a lot of the control data we might otherwise have for the stable portion of the flight, which is a bummer. When we picked up the rocket after landing, 3 out of 4 fins could rotate freely without back-driving the servos. Once we let the rocket cool off for 30 minutes, the fins were locked with the servos again.

This tells me it might have something to do with the heat inside the rocket? We idled on the pad for a long time and it's possible that built up and made a few parts melty. Most of the fin assembly is stainless, but there's one component made of PLA. In hindsight maybe that wasn't the greatest idea :)

As always, these problems are fixable! I'm looking at Dec 18th for flight 2 if we can get these bugs worked out before then. That'll of course be live streamed as well, hopefully a little better next time. In the meantime I've got a Christmas launch planned on Dec 4th. We're gonna fly something that is uhhhh... well it's sorta a rocket... If nothing else, It'll be spectacular.

Data coming soon, thanks as always for your support!

Joe