An embarrassment of riches

Six years ago I began trying to clone rockets out of the Bo-Mar catalog based on the catalog dimensions and drawings.  Back then I stopped after the Ajax and Alpha-B, but I treed the Alpha-B and it kind of sapped my enthusiasm for continuing the project.  Somehow, I got reinterested last week and placed an order with eRockets for parts for another Alpha-B, along with an Alpha-1 and Phoenix.  I started with the Alpha-1 the first day, then got ambitious and got to the Phoenix and Alpha-B.  All three were flyable by the weekend.

So, after six months of futility that saw me fly a pitiful total of 10 rockets, I found myself with flight conditions on consecutive Sundays.  It was already pretty hot when I got to the field a little before 11am, and I'd been smart enough to only pack ten rockets.  An hour later I'd upped my 2024 flight total to 33.  When it doesn't rain, it pours.

First on the pad for this brief launch would be the Whopper, an Estes Mini Fat Boy with the fins reversed and a new nose cone.  This would be the first flight since it was painted, but I still wasn't able to come up with a decal.  (I've since found an old Burger King font that I like.)  

The Whopper flight was unlike any other on the day.  Flying on an A3-4T, it left the pad heading to the right and back behind me, which put it in danger of three hazards, the Birdcage, the B6-4 Field backstop and US 27.  It chose wisely and split the difference, landing on the concrete walkway between the Birdcage and the backstop.  The ejection charge hadn't been enough to clear the plug of dog barf from the body tube, but the impact with the ground knocked it loose without issue.  Since several of the other rockets I'd brought hadn't been barfed up yet, I scooped it up and used it for them.

Flight #2 was the MPC Viper I cobbled together with my parts stash and a fin unit from eBay.  Thus far, the only thing I've done on this one is prime and paint the body tube, but the 50-year-old plastic fin can and nose cone still pop without any cosmetic help.  I have a decal scan ready to print to give it that vintage MPC look when I think to stop for printer ink.

While the Whopper flight had me cinched up from the start, the Viper chose a different path off the rod.  The A8-3 flight was largely straight off the pad to about 256.75', and popped the chute right on schedule dead overhead.  The chute filled as expected without the drama of the previous week and the rocket swung down to the infield, thirty feet to my right.  I can't describe it other than to say it was one of those perfect moments where everything had worked as expected and conditions were just right.  I've had this feeling before watching a flight.  This is why I keep doing this.

Over the years I found myself with two Quest Bright Hawks.  When I bought a Quest X-15 parts pack I neglected to buy the body tube to complete the project, but that didn't matter because I had two Quest Bright Hawks and one could donate a section of tubing for the X-15 project.  The donor rocket would forever be known as the Quest Half-Bright Hawk.  It was flight #3 on this fine day.

For this flight I went big, full B6-4.  I'd flown the Bright Hawks here previously on B6-4s and didn't anticipate any issues, but this was not a day that revealed itself in one fell swoop.  It had nooks and crannies, but I'm not sure what this flight fell under.  All I know is that it was completely different than the first two flight.  Where the Whopper had gone right and behind me off the pad, and the Viper had gone straight up, the HBH went WAY left.  The flight topped out a 402.314' and ejection came out over the school parking lot.  The house next to the school was having work done, and I initially thought the HBH was going to land on the work trucks that were parked in the lot.  It drifted back toward me, but that put it in the path of the tree at the edge of the field, the wires that caught my Semroc Centurion a decade ago, and Woodfill Avenue.  It missed the wires and the tree, but from my shortstop position it was difficult to see just where it had landed.  I started the recovery journey and found it sitting undamaged in the middle of Woodfill Avenue, usually a fairly busy street with cars entering and leaving the subdivision, but at this moment calm and sedate.  The calm was broken almost instantly as I arrived and packed up the chute.  Traffic was back to normal.

The flight lineup on my phone showed that the next flight was meant to be the Bo-Mar Phoenix, but an iffy "starter" intervened.  So, flight #4 would be the MPC Asp-1 that Lee Reep gifted me several years back.  It's a tiny rocket, so I chose a 1/4A3-3T for the flight, which was an excellent choice on my part.

The flight was perfect for conditions, overflying my 150' estimate and topping out around 208.4' out over left-center field.  I went with nose blow recovery, which was an iffy choice.  The Asp-1 came down sideways until the last 30', but it didn't pick up enough speed for the grass impact to do any damage.

As it was, the first Bo-Mar flight on the day would be the Alpha-1.  I went with a 1/2A6-2 because I wanted a flight, but not so much the altitude.  The Alpha-1 is a fairly light rocket, and the A8-3 gets some pretty serious altitude, so I opted for safety, at least until I got it painted.

As it was, the 1/2A6-2 was more than enough motor for the field.  The Alpha-1 boosted straight off the pad to 212.6'.  Ejection occurred as it was still moving up at a good clip.  (A 1/2A6-4 may have been a better pick if it existed.  I might make a mini-motor adapter before the next launch to see if the 1/2A3-4T motor works better.)  I had it loaded with a long streamer and it dropped to the hard packed infield, recovering without damage at second base.

The sister ship to the Alpha-1, the Bo-Mar Alpha-B was next to fly.  I'm not sure why they went with such similar names for these rockets, but it was 1969, so I'm going to give them a creative pass.

The Alpha-B would also fly on a 1/2A6-2 and a streamer.  As I mentioned earlier, the original incarnation of this rocket wound up decorating a tree on the hill in the background on an A8-3.  The flight was straight up to 213.25' and was still moving upward at ejection.  Recovery drift was further toward the Birdcage, but didn't reach the hard-packed infield.  Instead it landed deep behind first base on the grass and wound up with a crushed fin.  I mean splintered.  Thursday has me thinking that the damage wasn't caused by the landing, but by the nose cone impacting the fin at ejection.  Way too much damage for a grass landing.

Things cycled back to the Bo-Mar Phoenix for flight #7.  If something looks familiar about it, it shares a nose cone with the Alpha-B because I screwed up my order and only bought two.  When I build the Swift and Astro-Quest, I'll need to order three cones.

This flight would be on an A8-3 because I ran out of 1/2A6-2s.  It really showed in the altitude, as the Phoenix topped out at 308.156'.  Ejection occurred as it was still climbing, but not as quickly as the previous two flights.  The rocket and the streamer became entangled and it recovered quickly, landing hard on the infield at second base.  I anticipated replacing a fin, but everything survived intact.

At this point the heat of the day had started making itself known, and I was thinking more about the promise of the pool than of an eighth flight.  I still had the FSI Micro, Semroc Astrobee 350 and Centuri Vector V loaded and ready to fly.  I decided that I was committed to flying all of them and chose the Micro as flight #8.

 Somewhere there's more to share of this flight, but I can't find any of the video on my camera.  The A8-3 flight took off to the left and powered the Micro to 257.9'.  Ejection occurred just as it was tipping over out in straightaway center field and it streamed to a landing in left-center, bouncing high at impact.  It was recovered without damage and the Astrobee 350 was loaded on the rod, but nothing I would do could convince the launcher to accept one more launch.  

At some point I just disgustedly muttered "I guess eight is enough", a bad 70's TV show reference which I found funny.  That was my sign that the heat was getting to me, so I packed up and headed for home where the pool awaited.