Bayboro Launch Report, December 20-21, 2008

Santa brought us another beautiful North Carolina December day on Saturday! 60 degrees with light N to NE winds and partly cloudy. Turnout was low; lots of people missed some great flying weather. Sunday’s forecast looked miserable. I did not stay and don’t know how it turned out. There was only one static motor test planned that I know of.

Here is the motor use summary for Saturday:

Motor	No.
½ A	5
A	3
B	0
C	4
D	4
E	4
F	7
G	8
H	4
I	4
Total	43

Craig Anfinsen is a newcomer to Bayboro and flew some rockets with us for the first time. He launched many Aerotech rockets, an Initiator, G-Force, Arcas, and Astrobee, as well as three Estes rockets. Welcome back to rocketry Craig!

The Raleigh Charter High TARC team was out again flying The Ever-Fragrant Perfume of Divinity v2.5. They had five successful flights of their clustered spinning egg-lofter using two E9s and two C6’s for each flight. Spin tabs were used to insure a vertical flight and to control the altitude. I believe all twenty motors lit! One flight was 760 ft and 46 seconds, very close to the TARC targets of 750 ft and 45 seconds.

Natalie Harrell brought some delicious chocolate chip cookies and flew her Talon 2 in the same configuration (H97) as her L1 cert flight. But this time she used a rail instead of a rod, resulting in a nice vertical boost instead of rod whip and an arcing flight. A great lesson in why rails are the way to go.

Reed Goodwin-Johansson flew his X-Calibur with a video downlink on a G64. The video is on YouTube. He also uploaded some pictures to FotoTime.

Andrew and David Cox flew a bunch of cone and saucer shaped rockets on motors from 1/2A to H. They must be trying for a record for most rockets with the least altitude!

Stew McNaabb flew a Deltie glider on a 1/2A3-2. The glider experienced an early high-speed detachment from the booster pod, but survived.

The Lovelace family was back with Tanner and Bram launching a bunch of rockets, including a father-son drag race using Alphas.

David Hash had a successful dual-deploy altimeter flight on his White Rocket with an I285.

Lot’s of complex rockets were launched; including nine clusters and three two stage flights. Besides the TARC team clusters, Reed flew a Deuces Wild on two C6s. Tommy Harrell flew his 4 inch TestBed on two G76 Green Mohave motors with a successful altimeter deployment. Reed and Craig had nice two stage flights with a Renegade and a CC Express, respectively. Dave Morey tried his Upscale Arreaux with an I600R staging to a J135W. But the sustainer igniter did not start the J.

We had our share of entertaining misfortune as well. David Cox’s Magnum was flown on two H268 Redline motors. Both lit on the pad, but one chuffed through the entire arcing flight. One H268 was not enough to loft this beast. It plowed into the ground without getting high enough to arm the altimeter. The other H268 then decided to come up to pressure and push it deeper! Redlines are not a good choice for ground clusters; they can be hard to light.

Dave Morey was unsuccessful with his Sinister 29. Two G76s were supposed to get it off the ground, but only one lit. It had no significant airspeed when the air start motors fired. The two G40s and three E9s did some skywriting as a result. The altimeter deployed the chute but it did not have enough time to completely inflate, resulting in a couple of damaged fins.

Craig had a mishap with his G-Force. Seems the ejection charge was not enough to separate the rocket parts. It proceeded to punch a hole in the ground. A post mortem did not find anything wrong with the assembly of the G64. It’s probably a good idea to measure the ejection charge supplied with a reload to insure it is large enough.

Hope to see you all at the January two-day sport launch, or at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh for Astronomy Days.

Thanks to all who helped with setup and teardown.

Dave Morey

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