Vidroc Flight #2
Vidroc 1.5 (2 Stages) on launch pad, ready to go.
Flight Video
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Fascinating flight, but not as stable as I would have liked. The first stage flew straight, but the second stage veered off at an angle I wasn't expecting and for a short while caused concern because the rocket was now over a nearby marsh. Naturally, Vidroc wasn't designed for a water landing. Luckily, the system landed on dry land and thus qualified as a fully successful flight.
The video footage is wonderful, I really like the way the wide angle lens gives a curvature to the horizon. It's interesting to note that the staging introduced a mild signal glitch. Perhaps I need to foam mount the camera. (it's hard mounted to the nose cone)
The signal went out as the camera became more horizontal, as noted in flight 1. This is no doubt due to the antennas' alignment with each other. It was at this moment that the ejection charge blew and successfully deployed the parachutes (YEAH!!)
I had connected the single parachute to the tip of the nose cone so that it would look down as it descended. While this was a good concept, the single point mount resulted in the camera spinning way too much during the decent. This also caused the signal to phase in and out.
Epilog: The flight of the upper stage was the biggest problem with this test. I have two theories as to what may have introduced this characteristic: it was due to either the shape of the new camera shroud or the extraction of the parachute for the first stage. The easiest way to test this would be to make Flight 3 a single stage launch.
The spinning recovery should be pretty easy to solve by splitting the parachute cords between two mounts on the camera. It may still spin, but it shouldn't be with the speed of the single point mount.