Flight log
Real flights, with the data behind them. Comparable only because every entry carries the motor, the airframe and the liftoff mass alongside the number.
No flights yet
Nothing has been built, so nothing has flown. This page stays empty until there is a real flight to put in it, rather than being filled with a simulation to look established.
What is verified and what is notSubmitting a flight
Community submissions are not open yet. When they are, the format below is what a submission will contain, and it is deliberately mostly derived from the flight itself rather than typed in by hand.
The format is specified now anyway, so that opening it later is a mechanism change rather than a redesign, and so that anyone recording flights today records the fields that will be needed. The principle: anything the payload already knows is taken from the log rather than typed in, because a field a human retypes is a field a human gets wrong.
Files
meta.jsonrequiredCarries the firmware version, the tier, the record layout, the pressure reference, and the simulated flag. Without it the binary is not interpretable and the flight is not verifiable.
flight.binrequiredThe archival copy. CSV is a convenience derived from this, and a submission of CSV alone cannot be re-derived if a decoding bug is found later.
gnss.binif presentTaken from the log
Read out of the files above. Never typed in.
apogee_mmax_velocity_m_smax_accel_gflight_duration_stierfw_versionsimulatedpad_pressure_paWhat you tell us
Everything the payload cannot know. Kept short on purpose: a long form is a form nobody completes.
| Field | Required | Why |
|---|---|---|
motore.g. C6-5 | yes | The single most useful piece of context. An apogee figure means nothing without it. |
airframee.g. A named kit, or a description if scratch built | yes | Lets a reader compare against a rocket they own. |
liftoff_mass_g | yes | Apogee is mostly a function of motor and mass. Without mass, a flight is not comparable to any other flight. |
mountinginternal-sled | external-pod | other | yes | The pod costs drag. Accumulating flights both ways is how that cost gets measured rather than guessed at. |
stability_margin_cal | optional | From the flier's own simulation, with the payload fitted. |
wind | optional | Explains weathercocking and drift in the track. |
site_elevation_m | optional | |
notes | optional | Anything that went wrong, which is usually the interesting part. |
consent | yes | Explicit agreement to publish the flight data under the site's documentation licence. A flight archive that is unclear about this is useless to anyone who wants to analyse it. |
What is never collected
A GNSS track from a model rocket flight points at where somebody flies, and often at private land whose owner did not agree to be published. Submissions carry the flight's shape, not its absolute position, unless the submitter explicitly opts in.
Not needed to publish a flight.
Rules this archive holds itself to
- 01
A log whose manifest sets session.simulated is never published as a flight. A bench run produces a complete and entirely plausible log, and an archive that cannot tell the difference will eventually publish one.
- 02
The binary and its manifest are retained alongside any derived figure, so that a flight can be reprocessed if a decoding or filter bug is found.
- 03
Submitted logs are published unmodified. A flight that went badly is more useful than one that went well, and an archive that quietly drops the ugly ones is not a data set.
- 04
A truncated log is published and labelled as truncated. A log that ends at apogee is telling you something about the flight.