The event was the much cancelled North Texas High Power/Shoot for the Stars event here north of the DFW area, this is our premiere site in Texas with over 1600 acres of cleared farm land and waivers to 23,500' MSL. The event took place this past weekend on October 27-28. Of course my Phasar project has been ready since September of 2000, so not much to do, the M1315W was loaded last year in anticipation, I keeped the closures just barely on not to deform the o-rings and re-greased everything prior to departing to the launch site Friday evening. I think the only modifications I did to the original design were some wiring harness modifications to make it full-proof to mis-wire any of the altimeters/ejection charges and external key switches, plus I switched my regular eyebolts to the 3/8" forged shoulder units and the addition of shear pins at both separation points. (Ground tested of course) Kind of interesting what a year of sitting around looking at your project and what can you do to improve your chances of success will do. Anyway I was now giving myself about a 90% chance of success since the modifications. Extremely confident in my abilities and design but you can never foresee that inevitable bad luck that sometimes happens in a project of this magnitude.

Anyway the weather forecast for the weekend were outstanding, clear blue skies, in the low 70's with winds 5-10mph! Finally the rocket gods were shining down on me! We arrived at the site Saturday morning, I had a crew of 2 (Glenn Carey from Brownwood, Texas and Mike Martin from Missouri City, Texas) Level 2 guys plus my local TAP member Tom Montemayor give the Phasar one last inspection and was given the thumb's up from all of them. The Phasar was pretty much completely prepped prior to departure to the site, recovery systems, electronics, ejection charges, etc. The only field prep was to attach the shock cords to the av's bay and install the shear pins, a grand total of 5 minutes and then off the away cell. I know this is where other L3 projects check off an extensive list of things to do, check , etc. but I felt I do this with every L2 flight and the only difference here was the motor size. I guess that's what 40 L2 flights does for you, create an established procedure to fly and recover your rocket, no difference here for me at least! Anyway we lowered the rail, slide the Phasar in position, armed the electronics, stood the Phasar up, carefully I might add since I could not reach the arming switches when in the vertical position, installed the igniter, check continuity, and have some photos op's! I was at the away cell less than 10-minutes much to the amazement of the crowd, that's what practice/experience does for you! I've seen other people do there L3 and at the pad for an hour or so, now that would make me nervous!, what the hell are they doing? Anyway back to the RSO with my thumb's up. The waiver was in place for an estimated altitude of 11,300'. Skies where checked for aircraft, since we are in the flight path of DFW, and the countdown was announced, at t-minus 0 with Shelly Hatten at the RSO duties the LCO pressed the button and the 1st presence of the igniter beginning to pressurize the M1315W was visible, then the M1315W quickly came up to full pressure and the Phasar began it's vertical ascent to the heavens. There was a very slight pendulum motion since the static margin of stability was about 9.5 for a 4" rocket but once the Phasar gained speed it was nothing less than an arrow straight boost skyward. Also noted was the slight kick into the prevailing winds since the fin area was quite large. These 2 events were very predictable based upon my design and was actually a far more straighter flight than I originally predicted. Anyway the Phasar continued it's fantastic vertical ascension to apogee under the thrust of the 5.3 second burn time of the M1315W, a beautiful arc over and the tell-tale sign of smoke of an ejection charge going off separated the booster from the forward section and deployed the cert-3 skyangle drogue and began it's rapid descent back to earth. Then right on queue the main charges blew at 1200' and deployed the cert-3 large skyangle chute for it's finally journey back to the confines of gravity. It landed about 1.5 miles away and recovery was fairly simple, it landed in a wide open freshly plowed field, what a soft landing!

After the recovery the 2 Olsen's where downloaded and the final altitude was 11,621'! with a max acceleration of 325 ft/sec. The figures were about 350' off of what RockSim 5.0 predicted and the altitude difference between the 2 identical Olsen's was 208'.

In conclusion I have to think the entire project and attempt meet and exceeded all my goals of design and performance and reinforced my believe that I DO know what I am doing!

The Photos