Launch Report: June 16, 2002

Location		Espanola, NM
Temperature		mid 90s
Wind		10-15mph, W

Flight		Rocket		Motor		Comments
1		The Nerd Magnet		H128-W		Perfect flight.
2		The Nerd Magnet		H238-T		Ejection failed to pull out parachute; recovery tube heavily damaged, light damage to payload structure.

This was my first launch with my new local launch club, the Zia Spacemodelers. I only brought one rocket with me to New Mexico for the summer, The Nerd Magnet. Having just certified L1 with it in April, it was the flagship of my fleet.

Aerotech was still recovering from its fire last fall and I hadn't been able to buy any propellant for the rocket. To make matters worse, I couldn't find my temporary L1 certification card and my real card seemed to have gotten lost in the mail somewhere between the NAR and me.

The guy in charge of Zia was really helpful, however, and told me I could buy some old 29mm RMS reloads off him for cheap and that he would monitor my setup and launch prep activities and we could launch it in his name.

So off Nina and I went to the afternoon launch somewhere North of Española. The launch site turned out to be fantastic - it was a huge flat piece of desert on BLM land. The nearest rocket hazard was probably the highway, a good half-mile off. The only thing that might make recovering a rocket difficult were some low hills to the north and south, but a rocket would have to drift pretty far before this would become an issue. And besides, there was no wind at all.

The launch was scheduled to go from 1:30pm to 5:00pm, but when we showed up at 3:00pm there were only three cars and everyone was done launching. I met Tom and we chatted for a bit and I asked if I could still launch and he said, "of course." So I looked through his 29mm reloads and bought a H128W and a H238T for $10. He didn't have a 3/8" launch rod that matched the lugs on the Nerd Magnet, but we decided that a 1/4" rod would do the job.

The reloads were really old, to the point where the assembley sequence was noticeably different than the ones I had used in the past. But Tom walked me through it and we got the H128W ready to rock. There were some issues with the launch battery being dead and the clips being dirty, but once we got that figured out the Nerd Magnet was off for a perfect flight. The chute was a little late coming out, but that was probably because of the medium delay I put in it. Tom was out of short delays.

After the flight, the remaining spectators left and it was just Tom, Nina, and I. I immediately prepped the rocket for flight again on the H238T. I had never flown Blue Thunder propellant before. When Doug Gardei first showed me how to prep an RMS motor, he had indicated that the amount of black powder you get with a 29mm reload was more than I needed for such a small-diameter rocket. So I had been putting about half in for each of the past three launches of the Nerd Magnet.

When I loaded up this shot, I just put the remainder of the BP from the last shot in instead of opening up the new cannister. It was a little less than half though, but it looked sufficient. I also remember that as I was packing the parachute, it seemed to be a little tighter than perfect. The launch looked good. Blue Thunder motors really jump off the pad. Separation was right at apogee this time... but the parachute didn't quite make it out of the tube. The rocket fell about 1200' to the ground, with the aft section landing at its forward end and the forward section landing on its aft end.

I ran over to the crash site and surveyed the damage. Much to my delight none of the fins were damaged. However, the front end of the recovery tube was shattered It would need serious surgery. Also, the payload section coupler had been pushed into the payload section about an inch, bending the payload mount threaded rods and detaching them from the nosecone.

Almost everything was salvagable with the exception of the recovery tube and the payload mount. It is what I would call a successful failure - it broke exactly as I designed it to during a fall, leaving the expensive and hard to build parts of the rocket unscathed. I guess the bending of the payload mount was sub-optimal since that would have probably destroyed any electronics I had in there. But regardless I'm glad it didn't end up worse.

I'll probably be able to fix it for about $20 in new parts. This time I'll build it with a longer recovery tube so that I can get all that shock cord in there without it being so tight. And I'll use a lot more black powder from now on. After the crash I put away all my stuff while Tom took out his Estes Dude and launched it semi-successfully (it got a small puncture during launch which caused it to slowly deflate after landing). That's such a funny rocket; I may have to get one.