The Triad, Maiden Flight

Another glorious day at the Monroe, WA launch site. The maiden flight of The Triad was damage-free, but not incident-free... Click on any image for a larger version.

	Prepping The Triad for its first flight. Thats me facing the camera, in the white T-shirt.
	Liftoff...on only one of the three motors. If you look closely at the larger version of the picture (click on it) you can clearly see only one exhaust plume.
	At this point in its flight, its rather obvious something is wrong, the arcing is pretty extreme. Fortunately, the altimiter did its job, and the chute was deployed at apogee, approximately 500 feet. Expected alitidue with all three motors was around 2000 feet. We later determined that the ignitors I used (cyclones) required more current than the launch system could deliver to fire all three simultaneously.