Jerry O'Sullivan's web site: http://www.vahpr.com/
Photos & videos of this flight:
http://www.vahpr.com/Ts/ts47.html
Videos on Jerry's site are static cam (next to ATV receiver so you can hear the audio from two sources), ground, and ATV downlink without overlay. Also included are some still photos and screen shots of graphed flight data from the three different types of altimeters that were carried aloft.
The ATV downlink with telemetry overlay is here and is roughly 8 MB to maintain quality. A smaller (2 MB) e-mail file is here, but the video definition is not as good. R-DAS data files are: telemetry downlink at 10 Hz and onboard sampled at 200 Hz. OOPS.......note that I forgot to update the firmware before the launch, so these are version 3.1 files. I have already updated the firmware for the next flight.
This was an interesting and spectacular flight. Motors were made by Darren Wright, and they hit pretty hard with a truly incredible flame and roar. The ground video on Jerry's site shows the very impressive first stage burn.
There were a couple of anomalies in the day's events. A short circuit accidentally occurred when some insulation slipped off wiring in the sustainer electronics bay. This was discovered when arming the electronics triggering all 4 ejection charges. I was over at "mission control" (the back of my Volvo wagon where the electronics are set up) getting ready for the LCO's countdown a few minutes away when I noticed a jump on the telemetry screen along with a loud noise blasting out of the ATV system.....followed by a lot of static. I turned around to see a now "smaller" rocket out in the distance on the tower. Everybody was OK and the Sandhawk was soon put back together and ready to go, we watched a few "instant replays" on the VCR before heading back out to the launch rail.
Due to these events, the ATV batteries had been under drain for about an hour by the time the rocket was launched. So, there was a lower signal output from the video transmitter than we had on the first flight, this is visible as a bit more noise towards apogee.
The RDAS telemetry and data stored to RAM both show the shocks experienced by the airframe when the booster "spit" towards the end of the burn and when the 2 gram black powder separation charge fired. You can also hear these on the ATV downlink file. The ATV shows the booster sliding aft but the interstage coupler rods bind, and you can see the booster wiggling a bit in the slip stream before the second stage kicks in and blows it completely off.
This is an interesting curve in that it seems the sustainer hit a "drag wall" for two tenths of a second. I haven't seen this before, usually the velocity peaks then drops much quicker. We assume that the sustainer was just above or below Mach 1 at this point, where drag is substantial. For a brief period it appears that thrust and drag forces were roughly equal.