Launch Report: April 20, 2003
Pictures from this launch are on the Zia Spacemodelers launch page. A gorgeous day for rocketry! Really warm, sunny, and not much wind at all. The high-power flights at the Zia Spacemodelers launches have really been suffering in the wake of {9/11, the Aerotech fire}; people are digging deep into their piles of old propellant. My supply of AP is gone and now I'm using up the dregs of Tom's as well. Nonetheless, I felt the urge to launch large rockets on this fine day so I started off with Oscar on a G75. Coker was here to watch and was very interested in the RMS assembley process. I set up the high-power pad and got the rocket all ready to go, but when we fired it nothing happened. As usual, we assumed that Tom's ancient motors had bad coppertail ignitors so he rigged up a thermalite one for me. Again, nothing. Couldn't seem to get that sucker lit. Then Joyce pointed out to Tom that the high power pad control wire hadn't been plugged into the launch controller yet. Next shot took worked like a charm. The flight looked good, ejection at apogee, etc. But the parachute didn't seem to unfold. It turned out it had gotten tangled closed by a single errant shroud line. The rocket fell to earth much faster than made me comfortable. But it stuck the landing perfectly! It landed upright and didn't fall over. No damage at all. Can't fail much better than that! Being Easter Sunday, we held a special competition - PeepLoft 2003! The idea here was that you would attach a marshmellow peep to your rocket somehow, launch it, retrieve it, and eat it in the shortest time possible using at least a B motor. Rob Hermes and I decided that we would hold a sub-contest for dual-stage rockets. He went first with his V3 two-stager on a pair of D motors. It went really far downrange but ended up landing on the road. He drove out in his car to pick it up and the judges ruled this not cheating. Peeps are nasty to eat, but he managed to get his swallowed about 3.5 minutes after launch. Not liking peeps at all, I elected Nina to be my designated eater. But the judges said that the same person has to retrieve the rocket and eat the peep, so my entry in the 2-stage contest was proxied by Nina. It flew really well and landed just short of where Rob's had, but Nina elected to run for it rather than drive. She made the run in good time. Being weird, Nina actually likes marshmellow peeps and ate hers incredibly fast for a total time of just over two minutes. Coincidentally, she reported that the Echostar also stuck its landing! I decided that I wanted to give the PeepLoft a shot, despite loathing the damn things. It gave me a chance to use the payload chamber of my new Quest Super Eagle rocket. With a C6-3, that rocket is a low-flier. It arced up over the cars and came down quickly on its small parachutes. I was able to run over and catch the payload assembley as it came down. The boost assembley had come down about 3m away so I grabbed that and ran back while opening the payload and retrieving the peep. Once at the judging table, I ate the peep as fast as I could, which was excruciating. Yuck. Total time: ?? i forget, i'll get it from Joyce. But I did reasonably well. Next up was another maiden flight - the Estes Transwing Boost Glider. This was my first attempt at a boost glider and although I had never flown it before, I already hated it. This sentiment was echoed by Tom and Joyce, who it turns out actually beta-tested the kit for Estes some time ago. The flight was a disaster. It was too heavy on the side the glider body was mounted too, and just arced over in that direction and powered straight into the ground. It was too far away to see exactly what happened, but there were definitely several pieces thrown into the air by the impact. The post-mortem revealed that the plastic body had bent badly and snapped in one place, the horizontal stabilizer shattered and was missing a large section, and the tail boom was snapped. There will be no attempt to fix this terrible rocket. Because there was a good crowd and the weather was so nice, I decided to do a high-power finale with the Nerd Magnet XL on an H128. Even with the extended body tube, I still feel like the recovery harness gets jammed in there too tightly. But the flight went very well. The chute was late coming out of the tube but eventually made it out for a prefect landing. It was the most powerful flight of the day. Coker, at his second launch ever, was very impressed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||