Things were going too good to be true until this point… and when something is too good to be true, well, you know what happens.
The helicopter flight started off well, and we clearly took care of the problems we saw last time – the re-designed pulley was working very well, and the operation was proceeding smoothly. We got through cable deployment ok, (though pull-out was still too fast) but then just as we were entering the station-keeping portion of the flight, the helicopter exited the prescribed “box” it was supposed to be in, and also dropped the tension to the point where we had slack forming on the ground.
The procedure at that point is for the winch operator to spool in the slack in a controlled manner (since the pilot cannot see how much slack is on the ground) but before Michael had a chance to do so, the helicopter picked up the tension too fast, causing a release of a safety device at the top of the cable. That “breakaway link” is placed at the top of the cable to ensure that in such a contingency the cable separates in a controlled manner.
Not what we wanted at all.
I attached two pictures of the two parts of the link, after they separated. As you can see, there are three leaf springs that hold a small disk (the small part) in place, so in order for the small disk to extract, it has to force the springs open. Since the unit is reusable (in contrast to a single-use break-away link, which actually breaks) we can replicate the pull to figure out the force that it separated at.
So, again, we’re delayed. We need to look into why the helicopter exited its box, and why tension was lost – a process which will likely take at least 4 weeks. At this early stage, the best and only advice I can give you is – stay tuned! We’re working on it, this is very fixable, and we’ll be flying again soon.
Friday laser testing are going to go forward as planned, hope to have a better day than today was :)
Ben






For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...