Launch Report, September 26-27, 2009

The first launch of the fall season at Bayboro is a great time to get all of those new rocket projects to the field and try them out, to bring out the repaired projects and see how they fly, and, for me, a great chance to get out of the house after my surgery and spend some quality time outdoors. The weather on Saturday was cloudy with a fine mist of rain for brief intervals every few hours, and a brisk wind blowing out of the East, the "wrong" direction for this field. The low ceiling kept everybody flying rather low this weekend, so nobody dropped a rocket even close to the tree line. I had GREAT time, even though I followed my doctor’s advice and didn’t recover (or fly) any rockets.

A note about the motor use summary shown above: Clusters and staged rockets are classified according to the total installed impulse. So, for example, the Hoffman/Truedale flight using 3 C6’s and 2 B6’s was classified as an E motor flight.

The weather forecast was not very inviting at all on Friday and Saturday morning, so I didn’t expect much of a turnout. But, there were eventually 9 cars on-site on Saturday, and Ken Allen made the trip down from Goldsboro to sell motors and other supplies to the assembled "multitiude".

It was especially delightful to have several new flyers show up to fly and observe. Clark Moser, Roberta Merrill, and Waylon Truesdale, flew rockets at Bayboro for the first time, and long-time TRA stalwart John Elliott, who has recently moved from upstate New York to Wilmington, NC, dropped by to check out the field and the waiver.

The most exciting events of any launch are the certification flights. This weekend, Joe Hill certified TRA level 1 with a flight of his slim When I Escape on an Aerotech H165R. The flight was straight up, the chute came out at apogee, and the wind made for a long walk. One of the shroud lines caught the big, square-cut fins, and the parachute was flapping like a flag for most of the descent, but there was no damage, and the rocket was fit to fly. This was an especially enjoyable flight for me to observe, because Joe Hill has been flying rockets longer than I have. When I first showed up at Whitakers in 1999, Joe was flying very proficiently, and, as I recall, about 9 years old. This rocket also wins the Most interesting Rocket Name contest, and I found out that the name is taken from one of the bands that Joe plays drums for.

Stewart McNabb must have a climate-controlled vault at home where he keeps thousands of vintage model rockets! This weekend he brought out a splendid ESTES Big Bertha that he built in 1968, an ESTES Constellation built in 1976, and a beautiful little Skylance made from a set of plans published by ESTES in 1965. All of these little collector’s items are beautifully constructed, beautifully finished, and extremely valuable. Stew is not completely living in the past, however. He also brought and flew a brand-new Flis-kit Starloader which he flew on 3 D12’s, and a really nice SEMROC Aerodart, which flew on an E9.

Dave Hash has found a bad batch of ESTES E9’s, which CATO’ed in his Batter Up twice on Saturday. The second blast did some damage to the innards of this rocket, but it will be back.

Johnny Hoffman and Waylon Truesdale collaborated on a very impressive flight of a nicely finished SEMROC Hydra 7 which flew perfectly on a cluster of 3 C6’s and 2 B6’s.

Tanner Lovelace, Jim Livingston, David Hash, Zachary Hoetjes, and Dave Morey were all in attendance and getting the job done with a variety of perfect flights. Let us all hope for good weather for the second weekend of October, and I will see you at WELD!!

I want to give a special thank-you to all of those folks who helped with setting up the launch equipment and packing it up on Saturday night! Sunday morning was very nice until about 11:20 when the thundershowers moved in and began to pound the Bayboro area. Fortunately, I had made the decision to hook up the trailer and bail out before the rain got real bad, so when the real gully-washers began in earnest, I was already at Lionel’s house unhooking the trailer.

Finally, I want to extend a BIG thank-you to David Cox for fixing all the stuck buttons on all of the launch control relay boxes, and to Dave Morey for cleaning up and repairing all of the leads.

Alan Whitmore

Prefect, Tripoli East NC