OOGA (TVC mount) WAS TOO HEAVY

Initially, I created my motor mount out of steel because of its stronger heat resistance, but later realized that the mount was way too heavy and impractical for meaningful thrust-vector control. Additionally, the advantages of steel (higher heat retention, stronger, durability) were not justifiable in the case of a solid motor with very quick burnout time (~2.4s)

I recreated the motor mount with aluminum using metal lathes and manual mills in the makerspace's machine shop, shaving off 110 g of weight.

Flipped USB Connector
This was the first PCB I designed. While there are some obvious flaws, it was my first exposure to PCB design and improved my component utilization.

 
I opted to get my precise parts pre-soldered by JLCPCB. The initial communication between PCB and USB on my computer didn't work. After debugging signals and visually inspecting the board, I saw the USB connector was soldered the wrong way. I salvaged this by getting a ribbon cable and removing an unnecessary capacitor, but eventually decided to scrap the PCB to include more features and switch to more user-friendly ESP32 instead of STM32.                         

Shock-Cord Whipping

On my first rocket flight, the shock cord whipped violently at apogee and snapped my metal bracing out of the rocket, causing critical tears to the structure of the rocket.

I resolved this in future projects by very closely visualizing the recovery systems of future rockets, opting to use dual deployment and containing the shock cord to minimize the potential damage that could occur during parachute deployment.