L1 Rocket

My L1 certification rocket. Everything is built: airframe, avionics, recovery, parachute, preflight checklist. I just haven't had a launch window yet. The NAR L1 cert requires a witnessed flight at an insured range with a single H or I motor, stable ascent, and a successful parachute recovery. Once I get to a launch, the plan is solid.

The certification flight isn't the hard part. It's making sure everything works before you're standing on a field with a rocket on the pad and people watching.

• H or I motor only for the cert flight, single certified motor, no clustering
• Standard parachute recovery required. No tumble, glide, or non-parachute methods.
• CP has to be marked on the exterior, stability margin documented, and the certifier will ask you technical questions on the spot

• Kept the avionics bay accessible with one tool, no panel removal. Field conditions are not the place to discover you can't reach something.
• Wrote explicit go/no-go gates into the preflight checklist tied to physical states, not just task boxes
• Ran the full preflight procedure dry three times before ever going near a launch

1. 01

   OpenRocket for stability modeling and motor selection

2. 02

   Airframe build and fin alignment

3. 03

   Avionics and recovery packaging, bench-tested before integration

4. 04

   Preflight checklist written and dry-run until there were no surprises left in it

• The avionics packaging I thought would work fine needed a full rework once I actually tried to service it. What looks accessible in CAD isn't always accessible with cold hands.
• Recovery packaging fit was tighter than expected once temperature dropped. Something to spec more carefully on L2.