Successful Launch, Failed Recovery

After a fantastic liftoff, the rocket disappeared into the sky. I quickly set down my camera and picked up the receiver. I caught a signal to the southeast, and hopped into the car with some friends to go chase it. Two hours of driving around did not yield a single signal, and the rocket was given up for lost. We had several ideas why the signal could not be picked up: The rocket could have come in ballistic and buried itself underground. The rocket could have landed in water (since it had rained a lot previous days and flooded parts of the fields) and shorted out or blocked signal. Or it could have landed behind some structure or in a valley or ditch. The battery was new and good, and taped in securely, so it is unlikely that it caused the loss of signal. And while I did tape around the entire transmitter with electrical tape, there is a possibility that ejection gases could have gotten to it and messed with the electronics.


Since the rocket did hold together and didn't do anything wild or unstable, it is safe to assume that it did go supersonic, maybe as fast as Mach 2. I'm hoping to try some even faster minimum diameter projects in the future. First I have to earn some money.