We flew a 59.5 second tethered hover with payload today. For the amount of fuel loaded we needed to get to 65 seconds. We thought we ran out of peroxide, but on more examination we ran out of catalyst, and the last few seconds of flight were in water rocket mode with the remaining peroxide.
We ran out of catalyst because our catalyst tank sprang a pinhole leak in one of the welds. That ended todays testing. This looks like it might end our year as well. We drove home to try and adapt one of our 14” spherical tanks to replace our leaking 10” tank and it just wont fit. In driving home we had a long discussion, I’m for calling it done for this year and trying to pick up the 2nd place prizes next year. My Son does not want it to drag on beyond this month, so he wants to make a hail mary attempt for this year.
I don’t know if it is even possible. To make it this year we would have to:
Fix the tank problem and go out and test with Kevin for a 90 second tethered flight on Wedensday. Then go do the free flight next Sunday, 5 days before the contest. Can we still satisfy the Xprize and the FAA with less than 5 days between the possible required test and the contest?
We just don’t know. We will keep you posted.
True Zero is close, but they are just about to discover that their performance is not quite what they expect…. (see the comment at the end of their last post) We are struggling with that. It looks like it may be an Armadillo only show this year again, we gave it all we had and it looks like we might come up just short….
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