Bayboro 02/10 launch report

Launch Report February 27-28, 2010
by Alan Whitmore

We had a fabulous weekend at Bayboro, even though the wind was a little brisk and a little cool for most of the time. Clear, blue skies, and winds down the longest dimension of the field. Saturday was very well attended, but Sunday was not, even for a Tripoli Research event.

There were 2 new TARC teams in attendance, both from Enloe High School in Raleigh, there were some early disasters and a few quick repairs, and by the end of the day, they were getting into the general area of this years formula, which is 825’ altitude, 45 seconds of flight duration, and an egg. The trick for this year is that recovery must be by streamer – no parachutes. This is a hard one, it is very difficult to get a predictable descent rate with a streamer.

Saturday also saw the return of a few old friends: Mark Yeager, from Hopewell, VA, was back for the first time since the Whitakers days. Mark had a perfect flight with his Big Nuke, flying on a J350W and 2 air-started D12s. Mark was testing an altitmeter and a timer in the same flight. Charles Perkins III and IV were also back for the first time since Whitakers, and they made a lot of flights with a variety of C through G motors. One of these was a rocket called Yellow Jacket which contained an actual yellow jacket for the payload, or so the flight card reported.

Allow me to insert the motor use summary:

Motor	Sat	Sun	Both
A
B	1		1
C	12		12
D	7		7
E	3		3
F	14	2	16
G	4	1	5
H	2		2
I	5		5
J	2	2	4
K
L		1	1
All	50	6	56

Notice the large number of F motors this month, this is largely because of the TARC team activities.

The big event for the weekend was the successful level 1 certification by Kevin Murray. Kevin has been working on this for a while and he has had some really bad luck along the way, but this weekend everything went right, and his Wildman jr performed flawlessly on an Aerotech H123W. Kevin has the worse luck with ignitors that I have ever seen. They fail in every conceivable way in each and every motor. The flight card for his Initiator flight on Saturday reports 3 ignitor misfires before one of them finally lit the motor, and we had 2 more failures on Sunday before he got the same F24 combination to ignite.

Dennis Hill had an excellent flight with the new single use G34 which appears to be a Fast Black Jack formula. Did I mention it was windy? On Sunday the launch controller box blew off the table and got warped a little bit. We also had a few boy scouts in attendance on Saturday, I did not get their troop affiliation, but they were from the Pinetops area of NC.

Craig Anfinsen flew three different I motors in 2 different rockets on Saturday. Dave Morey brought out another new rocket, with a fascinating combination of 10 motors: 2 D12s and 2E9s were started on the ground, and then 2 D5s and 2 E9s were air started at 3 seconds. Some of the motors were located in detachable pods that fell off and were recovered under their own parachutes. Everything worked perfectly and was recovered intact. The total installed impulse for this flight was 240.2 N.s, so I listed it among the H motors in the motor use table.

I want to acknowledge the generous gift of a new low-power pad from Mike Collier of Roanoke Rapids. This device has 1/8 and 3/16 rods, blast deflectors, and adults can use it without needing to get down and kneel. Thanks Mike!

Sunday was another bright, sunny day. Jim Livingston arrived when I did and we set up the equipment. Kevin Murray was back later in the morning, and that was it for Sunday. Kevin flew his Wildman jr on a G67R, and the Initiator twice on F24s with the usual abysmal ignitor performance.

Alan Whitmore flew his Astro*Mollusk on a 2-grain 54mm motor to 3408’ after a very slow lift-off, and then put up the Red Snake on a 28mm small J motor made with sparky propellant. This rocket disappeared on the way up to 6773’ and required the Walston to track it down.

Then, Jim Livingston had prepped the rocket he acquired from Larry Z and "re-inforced" for Research work. This rocket, called EX mod 00889LZ, flew on a 3" diameter L motor made from the CP5 propellant. It was a fantastic flight to 6944’ and the recovery was perfect.

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