Launch Report Spring WELD – March 28-29, 2009

The weather forecasts were dire, but several people came anyway, and we were rewarded with several hours of decent rocket-flying weather. Saturday started gloomy and misty in the pre-dawn hours at Chapel Hill, and I drove to the field in patches of fog, mist and intermittent rain. I arrived at the field in a stiff wind and sprinkles. I sat up a few pads, and the weather didn’t get any worse (until about 5:00) and the rain just went away. By late morning, big gaps started to appear in the clouds. We were encouraged and set up a few more pads and started running some igniter leads. Some more people showed up and we pulled out the controller boxes and opened up the RSO table. Shortly after noon the sun came out and we worked away in direct sunshine!! I forgot my sun-screen in the dark, cloudy morning, so I got my first sunburn of 2009 on Saturday!

There were only 11 flights on Saturday, so I can give you the flights in quasi-numerical order. Jim Scarpine got the day going with a perfect flight of his Iris on an Aerotech H210R. Dave Morey then flew his Arreaux on a G53 for another perfect flight.

TARC team 7044 had 2 flights this weekend getting the final data for next weekends qualifying flights at Bahama, NC. Altitudes and durations were not recorded on the cards, but the flight I saw was a little high and a little long on the duration. I missed the second flight while I was away tracking down a rocket.

Eddie Haith had 2 flights also, both on the relatively new Aerotech G79G single-use motor. One was on a Loc Onyx and the other on a small red rocket that resembled the Lil Nuke. Both rockets were recovered in good shape later in the afternoon after Eddie had left and headed home.

There were 2 M motor flights this weekend: Alan Whitmore flew the Spork on a 115mm 3-grain M motor made from the CP5 formula to around 10,000 feet. All of the parts were recovered not quite intact. There were some minor misfunctions with the recovery straps, so all the parts did not fall in the same area, but with a little help from Dave Morey, everything was rounded up. This flight was part of the much-delayed "Rebuild, Repair, Repaint and Refurbish Your L3 Rocket and Fly it on a Homemade Motor" celebration originally planned for Spring WELD 2008 and cursed by the weather ever since. Several people originally planned to participate in this event, Jim Livingston, Mike McBurnett, Ed Rowe, Ben Russell, and Alan Whitmore have now made their flights, and Dennis Hill is the only original participant who has not gotten his rocket into the air at Bayboro. Yet.

Immediately after that flight, Michael Gunter was ready to make his L3 certification flight with his Tropic Lightning, using the M1350. [Aerotech? AMW?] Something happened in the recovery sequence and the rocket came in ballistic, and Michael had left the site before I finished rounding up the parts of my flight, so I don’t know what happened, but I hope that Michael will be back with a rebuilt rocket sometime soon. Please don’t get discouraged! Mistakes are how you learn.

There is a missing card, so I am going to have to fill in some sad details. Jim Livingston tested the sustainer section of his absolutely immaculate Nike-Ajax scale model on a 3" L motor. Almost a second into the flight, a fin came off, the rocket got sideways, the parachute got dumped out while the motor was still burning, and then things went real bad. This one hurt all of us. That was a beautiful rocket, with a lot of work in it, and it will take a lot of work to replace. I think Jim is planning to fly this as a 2-stage at LDRS this summer, and I hope the sustainer is repaired by then.

Fritz Sprecher finished off the day with a perfect flight of his ¼ Scale Patriot on a Cesaroni I285. The wind was picking up to the point where it was getting hard to walk in a straight line, so this one carried way down the field. Kevin Murray and I helped Fritz walk the fields to find the Patriot and Eddie Haith’s rockets were found during this sweep.

We packed up the trailer around 4:00 and by 5:00 thunderstorms were pounding the New Bern area, and several times during the night heavy rain could be heard outside the motels. Sunday morning was a lot like Saturday morning – highly variable: cloudy when I first looked out of the window, patches of sunlight as we finished breakfast, low clouds and drizzle as we drove from New Bern to the fields near Bayboro, warm and windy as I collected a little material from the Away Cell, and about the time Fritz and Jim Livingston arrived at the field, the rains moved in so hard that for about 5 minutes it was impossible to see the ground from inside a car or truck. Then, the rain abated, and the clouds got thinner and higher all day long. By 1:00 in the afternoon, we were again bathed in bright sunlight!

However, unlike Saturday, when the winds were merely inconvenient, the winds on Sunday were punishing. It was hard to keep a hat on your head, hard to keep glasses on your face, and steel tools were blowing off of the tailgate of my truck like little balls of tissue paper. It just got worse all day long, and as I was driving home through the stretch of Highway 70 between Kinston and Goldsboro, small sandstorms were beginning to carry away the topsoil of Lenoir County. My eyes are gritty and my skin is wind-burned.

Only one flight on Sunday. Alan Whitmore flew his Astro*Mollusc II on a homemade 2-grain 54mm J motor to about 3600 feet. Recovery was perfect, but it involved a long walk, as you might expect!!

This weekend has solidified (for me) a lesson about the weather at Bayboro. Whitakers was an inland location, and the weather forecasters were able to give a prediction about weather at that site that was often fairly accurate. Bayboro is a coastal site and the weather is entirely influenced by the coastal interaction between the big mass of ocean and the big mass of continental land. Teeny-tiny differences in wind direction can bring extremely different weather conditions to Bayboro and those conditions can change within minutes. The weather professionals don’t have the slightest notion of what the weather at Bayboro will actually be, even on the day of the launch.

Those of us who fly at Bayboro need to approach flying there with a different attitude from which we approached Whitakers. Bring your primary project, but also bring something smaller to fly to a lower altitude, be aware that the wind is going to be higher in these latitudes than they are in the piedmont, and plan accordingly: be prepared to walk.

Alan Whitmore

Prefect, Tripoli East NC

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