On the pad, I had some trouble arming the altimeter through the small holes I had put in the airframe.  I ended up having the open the altimeter bay to arm the unit (not cool!).  One lesson learned: make a bigger hole!  “One more thing”, Mitch said, “next time you might want to use shear pins on the nose cone.  Sometimes the force of the initial charge will push the nose cone off.”  But he checked the fit and though it would be OK.

Once every thing was readied, the count down was given and the Escape Velocity flew off the pad like a shot, making a beautiful straight flight.  Right at apogee there was a puff of smoke, followed immediately by another.  The drogue chute deployed but from which charge?  The rocket began to fall, picking up speed, then, suddenly, out came the main chute, much earlier than intended!.  Just what Mitch had feared had happened; the nose cone had come out and pulled the main chute with it.  The rocket slowed and began to drift but luckily there was no wind and it came down relatively straight.  About 500 feet from the ground a puff of smoke indicated that the altimeter had fired the main charge just as it was programed.  The rocket came down to rest in the middle of the field about 30 yards from the pad.  We listened as the altimeter beeped out 2822 feet, just about what RockSim had predicted.

Overall it was a great flight, that included dual deployment, I’m just not sure whether either of the them were caused by the altimeter ejection charges!  Before the next fight, I’m going to modify the altimeter bay to make arming the electronics easier and add a set of shear pins to the nose cone to prevent another early deployment.

Thanks to Mitch Guess for spending so much time with me and sharing so much of his expertise.  I really learned a lot and look forward to my next dual deployment flight!