On Sunday May 21st at approximately 0930, the Community Space Program Team launched Community Seven. On the pad the weight was approximately 160 pounds, 18.5 feet length, 11.5 inches diameter.

Boost on the M2500 was very nice and straight. The 3 K700 airstarts kicked in very quickly during the burn of the M2500 as expected. The 3 K185s ignited also - although I could not tell exactly when as they were timed to start during the end of the K700 burn. In total Newton-Seconds of propellant consumed, the flight was in the O range.

The deployment of the RocketMan R7 at apogee was as expected. At approximately 2000 feet altitude the main chutes deployed - two RocketMan R18s for the motor, drogue, electronics, and main sections, and an R12 for the Payload and nose.

Recovery was a mile (?) downrange.

When we collected the airframe, the ALTS25 beeped out 7100 feet altitude.

Due to my error in not installing both batteries in the Pratt Flight Computer it did not record any data. But the Cambridge accelerometer did.

Time to apogee = 23.76 seconds Max velocity = 531 feet per second Max acceleration = 6.35 g

When I plotted the acceleration data I had to smile as it looks just like the curve that my thrust curve addition program shows. The velocity and acceleration curves show the airstarts without any question.

You can clearly see that the K700s started producing thrust at 2.25 seconds and max thrust was at 2.75 seconds. This put it right in the middle of the M2500 burn. The airstart timer was set for .8 seconds. That shows that from igniter firing to thrust was a delay of about 1.5 seconds.

The second set of airstarts (the K185s) started at 4.3 seconds. The timer in this case was set for about 2.5 seconds (different timer and hard to set exactly). Again about 1.8 seconds from igniter burn to thrust. So the K185s were burning along with the K700s but after the M burnout. That is why visually it was hard (impossible?) to see.

The rocket started decelerating at 6.6 seconds. With a burn time of almost 7 seconds on the K185s it is easy to see that they did little in the way of pushing up.

All motors were burned out by 11.3 seconds and that leaves about 12.5 seconds coast time.

Finally, if you believe the accelerometer data at a fine resolution, Community Seven cleared the 18 foot rail doing about 60 fps.

Simulation predicted a altitude of 8300. I suspect that the weight I'm using in the simulation is a bit low. I need to reweigh the recovery gear, payload, and avionics section. I suspect I was overly optimistic in my figures. It's not like you can just take the airframe to the post office and use their scale!

On to Black Rock !

Pat Floyd and Kimberly Harms working on the assembly of the airframe sections and recovery gear	A good picture showing the sort of land available at the Brothers Oregon launch site
It takes quite a crew to assemble the airframe	Last part to assemble - the payload section and nose
The assembled airframe with the whole team, left to right: Steve Bear, Pat Floyd, Cheryl Larson, Marsha Botzer, Kimberly Harms, Greg Deputy, Tim Larson, Jessica Larson (front), Traci Scott (behind), Chris Scott, Stu Barrett, John Lyngdal.	Steve Bloom - our resident inspector - guiding the loading process
At 160 pounds its quite a bit of work to get it loaded on the rail without damage	Just about done ...
The business end of Community 7. The central 136mm motor mount was adapted down to 98mm for this flight on an AeroTech M2500 The six 54mm motor mounts were airstarted in groups of three. For this flight 3 K700s and 3 K185s	Motors loaded now time to go vertical.
The hard part completed	The next 5 pictures are of the launch. To keep things in scale, these pictures were take from over 500 feet away from the launch point.
Launch control, we have cleared the tower	Under boost from the M2500
The K700s kick in	Still going. The total burn time from igniter to the end of the K185s burn was over 12 seconds
Decent under chute. The motor, drogue, avionics, and main sections descend under two Rocketman R18 chutes. The payload and nose descend on their own Rocketman R12.