Launch Report Mar 14-15, 2009

When are we going to get a break? It was another cold, clammy, rainy weekend at Bayboro and the clouds lay over the fields like a blanket. The winds were (mostly) calm, the temperatures were a little above the frost-bite level, and the wheat was less than 3 inches tall, so the conditions for rocketry at Bayboro were just about perfect, except that the clouds were so low that a tall man could jump up and grab the butt of a thick, fat drippy cumulonimbus!! Three thousand eight hundred acres of the most empty land in North Carolina, and the clouds never lifted above the 1000 foot level all weekend.

The weather forecasts were wretched for both days, so the people who actually showed up exhibited a lot more faith than good sense, but I was grateful to see them all!

Jim Livingston and Alan Whitmore were the only people who showed up on EX Saturday, the rain never really happened, and Alan got in 2 flights of his new V3, using up all of the homemade H motors in the box. One flight, to 832 feet, was visible all the way up and down, and the next flight, to 1170 feet, disappeared in the clouds for a second. We waited for a few minutes until the rain started again, and then pulled the plug on Saturday.

Sunday started with some light rain, and then it turned into some pretty serious gully-washing rain, and then it backed off to some just plain flop-down rain, and then it eased off into your basic soaking rain around 12:30 noonish. It was cold. Around lunch time the TARC teams started arriving. David Hash made three flights of the Ever Fragrant Perfume of Divinity, getting extremely close to the desired measurements. The Fike High School team from Wilson was back with a redesigned Pink Demon, and they made at least 2 flights with an F25, and at least one of those was a qualifying flight.

Kevin Murray and his family made the trip from Greenville to fly Kevin’s Aerotech Initiator and Kaitlin Murray’s Egg-lofter. When they were recovering their rockets, the rains started up BIG-TIME, and we packed the trailer and hooked it up to the truck in the sort of down-pour that makes the sand and gravel bounce up at least 2 or 3 feet above the ground.

I dropped off the trailer at Lionel’s around 3:50 PM and was heading home by 4:00. I was still wet all the way through to the underwear when I rolled into my driveway at 7:00.

The hobby of rocketry in North Carolina has taken some real bad hits in the last few years. The ATF and CPSC regulatory assault is one reason, the loss of the field at Whitakers is another reason, and the absolutely horrible weather at Bayboro is another reason. For the last 10 rocket launch events at Bayboro, seven of those events have had such bad weather that only crazy people would show up. The other 3 events had horrible weather predictions, but a tiny number of people showed up and had a great time because the predictions were wrong.

I have just heard the news that Judge Walton has found in favor of the TRA/NAR law suit which means that APCP is no longer a regulated material. The AFTE has 2 months to file and appeal, and if they do, the restrictions will stay in place until the appeal has been carried out until its logical endpoint. If no appeal is filed it will still take a few days for the meaning of this finding to filter down into practical application, especially for the details of igniters and whether EX people will still need ATFE permits to buy our raw materials, but the future looks a lot better for amateur rocketry than it has for the last 9 years!

But that does not change the fact that the weather at Bayboro just horrible and will probably stay horrible. The weather at Bayboro is probably fine and calm and warm and dry when the crops are tall and verdant, but in the winter when we are allowed access to the field, we might as well be launching on the Kamchatka peninsula. I am about ready for a break.

Alan Whitmore

Prefect, Tripoli East NC

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