Bayboro Launch Report, October 25-26, 2008

Saturday was looking like a washout, the forecast was for high winds and rain, so I decided to cancel the launch and take the trailer to the field, park it there and go into New Bern and scout out some new motel possibilities. The forecasts were correct. I drove through rain and strong gusty wind all the way to New Bern. However, when I got to the field, I found a troop of Boy Scouts from Cary, NC, wondering where I was. We set up the low-power pads, and flew B’s and C’s all afternoon. The wind was terrific, so high that I soon realized that we would not be able to keep flight cards for this session, they would be blown away no matter how big the clip-board they were attached to. I have no idea how many rockets were launched that afternoon, we loaded up racks of 4 and punched them off in order for 4 hours straight, no breaks, no letups. All the while the wind shrieked through at 20 to 30 knots and intermittent rain squalls kept everybody half-soaked.

All the kids were soaked and filthy and exhausted when the scout-masters finally ran out of motors and igniters and stuffed them back in the cars and left. Then, big blue patches opened up in the clouds. By the time Eddie Haith and I had packed up the equipment and were driving back to New Bern, clear golden sunlight was shining all around and we could look off to the east and see big, fluffy, white thunderheads being pushed off-shore. What strange weather!

Sunday was absolutely perfect! 71 degrees, light NW winds that got milder and slower all day long, and a deep, glowing, radiant blue sky with air so clear that you could see for miles in every direction with no haze whatsoever. Every tiny puff of smoke, every bit of wadding, every flash of fin was visible from the ground. The quality of the air was just beyond description. Nobody lost any rockets. They were all clearly visible all the way up and down, and the winds didn’t carry anything very far away.

Here is the much-anticipated motor use summary (For Sunday, for Saturday, throw in 60 or 70 more B’c and C’s and a D or 2):

Motor	No.
½ A	1
A	7
B	4
C	10
D	8
E	9
F	5
G	2
H	7
I	1
J	1
K
L
M	2
Total	57

The big events are the certification flights, of course. This month was an especially joyful occasion because both of the gentlemen who certified at this launch had made "a number of attempts" at this level, and through the application of perseverance, intelligence, and absolutely refusing to get discouraged, they finally won the prize. We are all VERY proud of both of them.

First to the pad was Steve Daniel, from Durham, who launched his Orange Bird II on a Loki M1882 for a fantastic Tripoli L3 cert flight. The altitude didn’t get recorded on the card, but I think I remember that it was in the 12,000 foot region. This rocket is a little rough on the outside, but built like a brick porta-potty, and just packed with Walston equipment, flight recorders, and GPS telemetry [built in collaboration with Rik Faith and Evan Daniel, I think]. Very nice flight and flawless recovery!

Then, three flights later, Tommy Harrell brought his 4" Test Bed back with a H180W from Aerotech, and flew it to about 1800 feet for a perfect Tripoli cert level 1 flight. Tommy had flown the same rocket earlier in the day on a G64W to make sure the deployment was working perfectly [He was using an altimeter to deploy the parachute at apogee and relying on the motor ejection charge as a backup], so when he went to the pads with an H motor loaded up, the confidence level was high.

Both flights followed the best piece of advice I was ever given about making successful certification flights: Make a rocket that can be flown on a smaller motor within your current certification range, and become familiar with the flight and deployment characteristics of your rocket at low altitudes, where you can watch what is going on. This was especially difficult for Steve Daniel, because Orange Bird II only weighed 20 lbs fully loaded. I convinced him to fly it in the spring down in Orangeburg on a mild K motor so he could actually see how the parachutes and streamers came out, and then try the M motor. Congratulations to both of you on jobs well done!

Several families were in attendance, the Hashs, Harrells, Faiths, Moreys, Ken Stroud brought his wife, Johnny Hoffman brought his aunt and uncle, Tanner and Bram Lovelace were back again, and we were especially delighted to see a new father/son team of John and Jack Allman visiting us for the first time.

I have two favorite rocket names to report this month. Johnny Hoffman and Jack Orr brought all of the sophisticated South Carolina hybrid equipment to Bayboro and flew 2 hybrid motors for totally successful flights. Johnny’s rocket flew on the Hypertek M1000 motor and went to 9318 feet after almost 3 minutes of nitrous fill!! He calls this rocket Hy Tek Red Nek. The other name that I liked was a new(ish) Semroc kit called Geehad that Tommy Harrell brought with a full paint job and all the Semroc decals. (Carl’s little joke about the Islamic concept of jihad).

The most important thing that I will remember about this weekend will be the absolute clarity of the air on Sunday (after the fog and mist on Saturday). Dave Morey usually makes a flight of one of his multi-motored Sinister rockets at these commercial motor events, and Sunday was no exception. Dave flew the Sinister 29 on a cluster of 2 G76G’s started on the ground, 2 G53’s that lit at 2 seconds, and 3 E9s that started at 4 seconds after lift-off. The first 2 motors produced a green flame and almost no smoke, the G53s produced a billow of black smoke, and the E9s finished off the burn with that characteristic thin, grey smoke from black powder motors and the white smoke of their delay charges, before the distinctive white poof at apogee. It is always a pleasure to see Dave fly one of these technical tours-de-force, but the air was so clear and the sky was so deep blue that this event was an occasion that I will never forget. And, like almost every other event that occurred on Sunday, the deployment events occurred DIRECTLY overhead.

Alan Whitmore

Prefect, Tripoli East NC

Video by Tanner Lovelace

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