Wednesday, March 23, 2022

A taste of spring at B6-4 Field, 3-20-22

2022 has not been a kind year for weekends.  Seems that most of our severe or just plain lousy weather has always chosen to fall toward the end of the week around here, rendering Saturday and Sunday useless.  This held true for this particular weekend, with Friday and Saturday grey and drizzly.  However, the huge rains that were forecasted never materialized, leaving me with a sunny Sunday forecast with a potential need for muck boots on the field.  I had been packing up potential victims since early the previous week, so come Sunday afternoon I donned my muckers and headed for the field.  I found the field largely dry, which made the muckers unnecessary, but the winds slightly more robust than they'd appeared out my back window.  Oh, and goose crap.  Plenty of goose crap.

Things started off with a bang.  More like a bust.  Back in 2004, I built a Quest BrightHawk for an EMRR review.  All of the flights were made at B6-4 field and after I was done for the day, I gave it to the kid who'd done the recovery legwork for me.  It made it back to me last fall, and I planned to make it my leadoff flight on the day.  I'd loaded it with a B6-4 at home, then when I tried to install the ignitor at the field, the whole motor mount slid up inside the body tub and the fin can came off.  So much for my 18 year old glue job.  In its place I chose the eBay HoJo as my first flight of the day.

This would be the first flight for this rocket since 2015.  The first thing you might notice about it is the ugly factor.  It obviously started life as an Estes Honest John, but there appears to have been an attempt at some Big Daddy Roth-esque customization.  (That sound you're likely hearing is Big Daddy rolling in his grave.)  My first thought was to restore it to missile status, but some of the customization involved cutting away a good deal of the nose cone material.  It was left looking like a Christmas light.  From an ugly house.

This would be an A8-3 flight to test the winds.  Boy, did it test some winds.

For an A8-3 flight, this got some serious altitude, topping out around 400' over the outfield of the softball complex.  It windcocked so severely that my initial worry was that it would land on the softball field and be lost because my fence climbing days are about 30 years past.  That idea lasted until the chute popped after ejection.  The chute was an old Quest chute, no spill hole, that was rattling around the bottom of the box.  (I hadn't done much in the way of planning for this launch other than put dog barf and a motor in my intended victims.)  The old Quest chutes were notorious for their hit or miss performance, but this one popped and filled immediately, and the rocket started drifting toward US 27 at a rapid clip.  It actually cleared the road, but landed on the asphalt parking lot of the doctor's building, breaking a fin and delaminating the body tube when it hit.  It was an inauspicious start to the day, and I almost packed up and went home.

Almost.


I really don't know what made me stick it out, but after a pad adjustment, flight #2 would be the Space Plowboy, another of my shop scrap birds, on a B6-4.


Doug Sams and I got a laugh at this bird.  Turns out purple and yellow/gold were the school colors for his high school and one of mine.  Out local nickname was the Plow Pushers, and I was listening to a Steve Miller album while I built the rocket.  I changed Space Cowboy around a little and had my name.  Hopefully Steve Miller won't want royalties.  This is a fairly chunky bird, so I felt comfortable with it being a B6-4 flight.



Aaand, I over-corrected on the pad adjustment.  Nothing a simple rod adjustment wouldn't fix, but the Plowboy flew back over my head toward the trees at the top of the hill.  Had the flight recovered as normal, it may very well have drifted into the tree, but I got lucky with a parawad recovery that brought it down in dead center field.  Bounce recovery, but everything held together.

Flight #3 was supposed to be the Estes EAC Firecat that I cloned with one of the ubiquitous Mini HoJos from Wal-Mart.  It missed the last launch because I'd forgotten a launch lug, so I took care of that yesterday.  Today as I was attaching a parachute, the body tube slipped out of my hands and fell three feet to the ground.  It wasn't much, but it was enough to crack off one of the wingtip fins.  Instead, I pulled another of my shop scrap birds from the box.  The Skyway Star, another rocket named based on what song I was listening to when I thought it up, (Deep Purple, hence the fin color,) would pinch hit in the three slot.


I'd readjusted the rod again before this flight, and with it now set at a nice, neutral angle relative to the wind I loaded the Skyway Star with a B6-4 and figured for a mid-field recovery.  Missed it by this much.  


As typical of the day, the Skyway Star rode the breeze to the left as it departed the pad.  Nothing about the flight suggested it would take the recovery path that it did, but there was very little to show that the winds up high were causing the kind of havoc that they apparently were.  The SS popped the chute, one of the 10 for $1 chutes that I got from eBay 20 years ago and began drifting back across B6-4 Field.  It was then that I heard applause and turned around to find my wife and her friend watching.  I turned back to watch the rest of the recovery just in time to see the rocket catch the wire and hang itself next to one of the telephone poles that run up US 27.  Witchcraft.  I've long suspected it, but now I have proof.


I guess I can stop thinking up ideas for a decal.

At this point I really was planning to pack it in, but as I began putting the two flown rockets back in the box, I saw the Estes Bandito at the bottom.  It had come from the same guy as the Brighthawk, but was not originally one of my builds.  As such, someone had glued the engine retainer in place.  Nothing I tried could get it to twist off, so I got the multi-tool out and pried it off.  Now it's a friction fit bird.


This would be an A3-4T flight, because I wasn't of a mind to care.  It would also be nose blow recovery for the same reason.  Windcocked left as expected.  Altitude was impressive, around 400' well over the softball outfield.  I initially thought it was going to recover there, but it drifted back my way and came in fast on the baseball infield where it was recovered without damage.



Emboldened by the success of the Bandito, I decided to press my luck with the Estes Hi-Flier on an A8-3.  I've flown this combo several times here, with the last two going unstable as they left the pad.  That wasn't this bird, but another one that I'd built out of boredom.


Technical difficulties prevented me from getting a launch pic for this flight.  (The delicate phone/launcher balance underwent something of an anomaly.  Or I spazzed.  Even money on either.)  Whatever the case, this Hi-Flier turned in the typical great performance.  I think the difference in the two birds is a plastic nose cone on this one versus a balsa cone on the other.  Anyway, windcocked left, topped out over the softball field, then fell quickly back toward the baseball side, landing half on the outfield and half on the infield.  The nose cone stuck the landing.


With the Hi-Flier flight a success, I decided to further press my luck.  The next three flights would all have the same nose cone profile, starting with the Estes Chuter Two, one of the oddball bring backs from a few years back, but one I really liked.

I was pretty happy with how this one turned out, then it got an Estes dent on the first flight.  I kinda lost my enthusiasm after that, hence the almost eight years between flights.  It was handy today when I was packing up, so it got a second shot.  It kicked left off the pad on an A8-3 to about 300'.  Recovery was handled by a well powdered Estes drag chute that brought the rocket down on the pitcher's mound.  According to my notes it was the prettiest flight of the day.




Flight #7 was the Estes Crossfire ISX.  My buddy Zog claimed that he hated the Crossfire and tried to lose it by flying it at B6-4 Field on a C6-5 multiple times in a day.  In the end, both of us were impressed.  He kept his and I wound up buying one of my own.

This one would be an A8-3 flight.  While the Chuter Two may have been the prettiest flight of the day, the Crossfire was likely the best one of the day.  Like almost everything else I flew, it arced out over the softball outfield before drifting back to the baseball field and recovering at shortstop.  The only way I could have made the flight better was if I had bothered to clean the accumulated dust off of the fins.  Buy lots of these.  It's a very forgiving design.




Flight #8 would be the last flight of the day, and not because I had run out of rockets.  Off the top of my head, I still had the Estes Scrambler, D.O.M. Argus II, Semroc Javelin and Aerobee Hi in the box, prepped and flight-ready.  I grabbed the Estes Black Brant III out of all of them.

Yeah, I know.  Black Brants equal big air, even on an A8-3, but I thought I'd figured the winds out at this point.  Yeah, no.  It left the pad heading left, way out over the softball field and deeper into it than any other flight on the day.  Altitude appeared to be around 400' and ejection came just as it was tipping over.  Recovery began to look iffy from the moment that the chute filled.  It followed the same path as most of the others had on the day, but it was obviously not going to land on the field.  I spouted some rocket poetry, safed the launcher, and began a fast muck walk toward US 27.  It landed in the middle of the northbound lane when not a car was in sight.  That wouldn't last, and despite my muck jog, two cars drove over it before I could get to where it had by now blown down by the insurance building parking lot.  Either car could have flattened it, but both went out of their way to straddle it, and as a result, the only damage was a few paint chips.  Just as I was about to take a landing shot, more traffic appeared, so I concentrated on getting out of their way instead of photography.  I knew my day was done, and I was happy to only have lost one and had one damaged despite three leaving the field.



I considered an eight flight day worth my time.  A lot was left on the table, but that just means I'll have a head start on my next B6-4 Field launch.  Hopefully there will be a club launch before that happens, but the way my life is scheduled lately makes that an iffy prospect.  2022 is testing me, and I lost the syllabus.  Will this be on the final?

1 comment:

  1. You're having a year like mine. Every weekend has been rainy or way too windy for me.

    ReplyDelete