Launch Report, Battleboro, February 24, 2007

Rocket launches in February are a very iffy affair. Usually you can expect nasty weather that is either cold, or extremely cold. But, occasionally, nature will deal up a real gem like last Saturday! The day was clear, with gleaming blue skies all day long. The temperatures were chilly early in the day, exacerbated by a stiff breeze, but as the day wore on the winds dropped, the temperatures crept up, and by mid-afternoon we had a perfect day for rocketry. I even flew my little Semroc kit, the Jaguar, on an Aerotech E15W, which was simmed to about 3200 feet, and recovered it after a short walk.

Here is the motor use summary:

The big excitement for the weekend was the great progress made by our two Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) teams that have been getting their entries tuned up and dialed in at our recent launches. The first team is lead by Virginia Harrel from Wilson (I think) and has been tuning up an F52-powered entry called The Angel Egg Carton. They had 3 successful flights on Saturday and are clearly ready to make a qualifying flight. I’m sorry I didn’t get all of the names of the members of this team, but I’ll correct that next month.

The other TARC team is from Raleigh and consists of David Hash, Greg Izatt, and Ben Izatt. They have adopted a minimalist approach to their entry, called the TARC prototype 1, and fly their rocket on the E28 motor. This team made 5 flights on Saturday, all of which worked very well. Just to re-cap this years’ challenge, the goal is to get one raw egg to exactly 850 feet above ground level, arrange the parachute size to hang it in the air for exactly 45 second from lift-off, and not to break the egg. I don’t have all the data in front of me, but from what I could overhear, both teams were getting it fairly close.

We had several newcomers this month. Young Lance Stewart has recently caught the rocketry bug, and his parents brought him out to Battleboro this month. He made eleven flights in the B, C, D, and E range. Not bad for a 6-year old. Charles Perkins III and IV were also on hand for the first time, bringing a variety of extremely well-painted small rockets (nice work CP III!!) and making 14 successful flights. Two of these flights were with the extremely entertaining Estes Dude on D12 power. In addition, Aaron and Lily Zellen came out to watch us fly, and ended up flying 2 of Paul Hoetjes’ small rockets. I hope you all will join us again soon!

John and Nick Hobson were also busy on Saturday, making 7 flights, many in the G and H range.

Dave Morey flew a very interesting high-drag design this month with a funnel doing the work of the fins. He has flown this rocket at Battleboro before, but that was probably the month I was sick. This time he installed a very strong Aerotech I161W, and the moment the motor shut off, it drag-separated, zippering the airframe, but causing no damage to one of Liz’s very nice parachutes.

I have 2 favorite rocket names this month. The first is Virginia Harrel’s Trouble Machine, which is exactly what it proved to be! The second nominee may be the result of my misreading his hand-writing, so this will be a ‘conditional’ nomination: The flyer was Ben Izatt, and (I think) the rocket was named Shard.

Alan Whitmore