Launch Report, February 25-26, 2006

We don’t expect too much from a February launch, and we didn’t get too much this year.

Saturday was cool and cloudy and windy. The wind was out of the west and fairly strong, between 10 and 20 MPH all day. Even B and C motor flights were getting blown over the road and high-power flights were mostly put back in the truck. On Sunday the clouds had moved out, the wind shifted back to the northeast running at more than 20 MPH for most of the day, and the temperature plummeted down into the arctic regions. Conditions were miserable and the trailer was packed up by 2:00 on Sunday.

Here is the famous “Motor Use Summary” and my analysis:

Shrieking high winds tend to inhibit high-power rocketry. I used to fly to big altitudes when the wind was high, and I got too familiar with the forests of Eastern North Carolina. Our cow pasture is huge, and there are 2400 acres of crop land arranged around our field, but when you get out to about a mile away, or 1.6 miles down the long dimension of the field that lies to the northeast, you get into the woods, and the briar-bramble swamps that broke our ancestors backs as they tried to hack some farmland out of these semi-tropical woodlands. The trees are tall, and the swamps are deep and filled with vicious briars. There comes a time when you can arrive at the launch field, walk around in the wind, and decide that maybe next month will be better, and you just put the rockets back in the car and stand around and talk and visit for a while. This was just such a weekend. I have no certification flights to report.

However, there was a lot of interesting low-power flying going on at this launch. Most interesting was the return of the Winiewicz family to Whitakers, they were regulars several years ago and we have not seen them for a long time. Welcome back, Walt and Bill.

There were (I think) 3 generations of Harasti’s at this launch. Joe and Joey were there for sure and I think I was chatting for a while with Joe’s father.

The biggest flight of the day was a Mike Harris endeavor using the Rattworks hybrid K240 in his modified Snarky’s Express. This version was a great deal more stable than the last version, and the flight was a success. I would like to see some accellerometer data on these Rattworks K’s to evaluate whether they actually put out the advertized total thrust figures. This one seemed a little weak, but asking a hybrid motor to put out huge power on a cold day is expecting a little too much. Nitrous oxide just doesn’t want to get up and go when the ambient temperatures are cold.

We also had a very fine initial test for a TARC team from Knightdale. Andrew Clarke, Ben Izatt, Greg Izatt, and David Hash were checking out a prototype designed to address this year’s competition goal, which is to loft a raw egg to exactly 800 feet, get it back to earth in 45 seconds or less, and not break the egg, using an F motor. This team of young scientists did not break the egg, but flew a little low and hung up the parachute a little too long. They have a great baseline set of data and know where they have to go. I will be following this project closely, these guys have a real chance to go all the way into the national competition.

We had lots of Harrells and Wallaces on site and they all made a lot of flights, too many to record here.

I had never seen the Semroc “retro-repro” kit called the Li’l Ivan, and on Saturday two of them came by the RSO table. This model was apparently a precursor to the Estes FatBoy and is a lot more stable.

My favorite rocket name this month was from Joe Hill: Jerry and Doug’s Spray Bomb. I have been a big fan of the paint jobs that Jerry Robbins and Doug Gamber put on their rockets, so I can see where the inspiration for this name came from, but unfortunately I was not around the RSO table or the LCO table when this rocket came through, so I didn’t see it.

Sunday consisted of 2 static tests by Stephen and Evan Daniel and the flight of Stephen’s X2 on a PVC hybrid EX motor rated at a K660. The flight barely scraped into the 1000 foot range but was recovered easily in a steady gale-force wind. The wind was high and the temperature was very cold, so we packed the trailer and went home. March will be better, Paul promises it!!!

Alan Whitmore
Prefect Tripoli NC