Stay-cation launch at B6-4 Field

 In all honesty, this launch took place over two days, with one flight on Sunday and seven on Thursday.  I'd missed the WSR launch on Saturday due to allergies and not wanting to drive I-75, so I attempted to do a launch on Sunday after breakfast.  I had igniter issues at a previous B6-4 Field launch, so I took a bunch of igniters and painted them with a particularly trashy nail polish that was heavy on nitrocellulose.  When that batch had dried, I made another batch with nail polish and a quick dip in some muzzle loaders BP.  Even though I took both batches with me to the field, I only tried the nail polish igniters.  Pool fever, I guess.

Things started out looking great.  The wind test bird for the day would be an Estes Yellow Star Crayon that I picked up on clearance years ago.  It had flown once back in 2013 and that glaring decade long hiatus ate at me every time I made a list of rockets that hadn't flown in a while.  Eleven years after flight #1, flight #2 would be on a perfect day at B6-4 Field on a B6-4.

As you can see, this was a difficult build.  I had to unpackage it, load it with dog barf and fluff the chute.  It's actually the perfect bird for days like this.  You can't overfly the field with a B6-4, and even a C6-5 would likely be doable in calm conditions.  Today could have been a C6-5 day, but why push it?  There was no lag on this flight.  It left the pad as I pressed the button and during the flight you can hear me say "It's gonna be a good day."  Not to spoil the story, but it wasn't.  I was set up on the infield at deep short and the Yellow Star Crayon left the pad heading toward left field, right into the sun.  It topped out at 294' and began drifting toward foul territory on the unreefed chute, touching down on the sidewalk in front of my car.  I recovered it and headed back to the pad where I tried the Estes Orbital Interceptor and Comet, neither of which left the pad.  By this time, I was hot, and the pool was calling loudly, so I disgustedly called it a day. 

Flight #2 didn't happen until Thursday, day #2 of my August stay-cation.  I chose the Estes Orbital Interceptor because it had made it to the pad before failing on Sunday.  Plus, it's a sharp looking bird.

This would be an A8-3 flight as I've found that BT-50 birds are flyable on B6-4s only in conditions of extreme calm.  This flight would show just why.  The OI left the pad heading dead straight and topped out at 362'.  It was still moving up at ejection, so something was likely left on the table altitude-wise.  It drifted out toward dead center under chute and landed with a bounce but survived without damage.  (August grass in NKY is concrete dry.)  Once again, it looked like it was going to be a good day.

I had noticed a teacher and her class at the front of the school before the OI flight, but I didn't think they were paying attention.  They were walking behind the cars in the school driveway for the OI flight and didn't seem to have noticed it, but they stopped at the end of the driveway as I was prepping the FRW Scythe for the next flight.  I could hear the teacher talking to them and it wasn't until they started doing a countdown that I realized their attention had shifted to me.  I waved and they cheered, so I doubled down on prepping the Scythe.  This would be another A8-3 flight and once I got it ready to launch, I pointed to the students, who dutifully began another countdown.  There will be no on-pad glamour shot of the Scythe because I forgot in all the excitement.  You'll just have to let the video speak to your rocketry soul.

There was a slight lag from when they hit zero on the countdown to when the Scythe took off, but it was short enough to be barely noticeable.  I was just glad it fired at all.  This flight was also fairly straight with a slight bend to right center, topping out at 379'.  At ejection the shroud lines tangled and caused a fast parawad descent to a landing in short right field.  I had noticed something coming down at roughly the same rate as the rocket body, but figured it was wadding.  Wrong.  The nose cone had blown loose during the flight and recovered within inches of the rest of the rocket.  I was a little too quick in ending the video and it caused me to cut out the standing ovation I received.  Definitely a high point in my 47-year B6-4 Field career.

I recently finished applying the CMR decals to an Estes X-16 that I got in an eBay lot of badly used rockets several years ago.  It needed new fins, recovery system and general shoring up and I recently got interested in finishing the project.  For a rocket that was a step away from the dumpster, it turned out pretty nice.  It had flown since it was painted, but this would be the first flight in full livery.

Whatever I did, I must have done it right.  The A8-3 flight boosted dead straight off the pad to 263' and ejected as it reached apogee.  Recovery was the best on the day with no parawad and a mostly straight drop on a nice, slow recovery in right field.  Gotta admit, I was feeling good about my chances for finishing off the box at this rate.

The first hiccup of the day came next.  I had a Centuri Viking loaded with an A8-3 and nothing I could do convinced it to attempt a flight.  I almost packed up right then, but decided to give the recently repaired Semroc Sky Hook II a shot.

This would also be an A8-3 flight.  It boosted straight to 238', then leaned left before ejection.  The recovery path was S-shaped, heading back to the right before returning to center field straight out from the pad.

The Quest Antari would be the sixth flight of the day.  This is a mystery bird.  I have no memory of buying it, but it's possible that it was sent to be by Quest for some help I provided with a quality control issue.  To date it's flown once back in 2013.

This would easily be the highest flight on the day, topping out at 406'.  The Bo-Mar Spartan may have given it a run for the money if it had a normal flight, but more on that in a minute.  The Antari flight was to the right off the pad and it was still heading up at ejection.  Streamer was a Mylar packing strip from the batch that chaffed the inside of my car a couple of weeks back, but the lack of sun made it almost useless from a visibility standpoint.  Recovery was a hard shot to the infield between first and second.

Next would be the bad-luck Bo-Mar Spartan, a clone that I best-guessed back in 2018.  This would be flight #2 for this bird, with the first flight having the distinction of being the weirdest recovery of all of my 2000+ flights.  The nose cone had rebounded into the top of the body tube and stuck there, resulting in a crushed tube and a nose cone scarred with a semi-circular cut.  I started to fix the nose cone, but only got as far as filling and sanding to cut, so the scar is still visible.

This flight seemed normal from the start, but things quickly changed for the worse.  I first thought it was an early ejection, but then noticed that the nose cone was taking an entirely different recovery path than the body tube.  The nose cone hit the ground in right field, while the body tube landed in dead center.  I initially suspected a snapped Kevlar shock cord, but when I found the nose cone it still had the thrust ring attached.  The ring was almost completely burned away.  I've never heard of an A8-3 CATO, but all things point that way.

It wasn't planned that way, but the Estes JBR-013 would be the last flight of the day.  At this point in the day, I'd drawn a spectator, a neighbor who spotted me launching and wondered if I was doing what I looked like I was doing.  When he first came down to the field, I thought I might be about to be asked to leave, but when he asked if I was flying Estes rockets, I figured he was one of us.  He'd flown in the 70's but hadn't had anything to do with flying since then.  He was wondering if the rockets I was flying were all kits or just scratch builds and I told him I had a mix of both.  The JBR-013 was closest to the top of the box, so it got the nod as demonstration flight.

By this time, I was afraid I was about to run out of battery power, so it was a nice surprise when the JBR-013 actually launched.  The flight was straight to 204' and ejected as it was still moving forward at ejection.  I immediately realized that I'd made a mistake in not checking the chute before the flight as at ejection it remained unfurled.  I explained what "parawad" meant and why it was my fault.  The JBR-013 recovered to the right of the pad by 20' and the impact with the field was pretty harsh, but the fact that it hit grass helped prevent any damage other than a bit of rash at the top of the body tube.  

My guest and I chatted a bit more while I prepped the Estes Comet, which was to be my next flight.  He mentioned something about scouring for kits online and possibly joining me for a future launch now that he knew it was apparently legal in the Fort.  He was leaving the field as I counted down to disappointment.  It was a no-go, which earned me a rueful laugh from him.  As he was driving away, I began prepping the Estes Astron Mark, but that too failed to launch.  I considered eight flights enough for a blog update, so I packed the box, struck the pad and headed for home.

Apparently, I'm a shill for eBay.

After the last launch with the Wright Stuff Rocketeers I made sure to invest heavily in Power-Ade Zero to try and ward off the heat stroke that has a summer home in Dayton, Ohio.  We had friends over on Friday night and everyone commented on how pleasant it was on the back deck.  Luckily, that weather was held over for Saturday.

The trip to the field was uneventful.  I found myself with little to do in the afternoon on a couple of days the week past, so I made good use of the time and hunted down 16 rockets that needed flying according to my spreadsheet.  First and foremost was the Centuri Bulldog that I'd forgotten on the previous trip north.  To go along with that I had rockets that had waited since as far back as 2003 for a second flight.  I was loaded for bear, as long as no actual bears were involved.

I arrived to find the range bright and already hot.  Humidity was noticeably absent, which made for a pleasant change.  Breezes were light to the extreme, so while things were calm I decided to go heavy on the D12 flights I had brought along.  First on the pad was the Centuri Bulldog AGM-83A.  This had "flown" here in 2023, a cartwheeling gymnastics show that wound up ejecting on the ground and breaking off a fin.  I fixed the fin and added nose weight before the previous launch, and it enjoyed a two week stay on the living room coffee table.  It almost got a fresh coat of primer on Friday, but I ran out of time.

The added nose weight made all the difference.  The D12-5 flight boosted straight and tailed off to the left somewhat, topping out at 673' and ejecting as it tipped over.  Recovery was on the soccer lot, a harsh gravel landing that surprisingly didn't cost me a fin but did cause a dent in the witch hat of the nose cone.  Nothing a little thin CA won't fix.

My second flight would be my home brew USS America.  I bought a nose cone and ram jet set from Moldin' Oldies years ago and did my own USS America just before Carl decided to produce one under the Semroc banner.  Design-wise, it was my favorite of the Super Kits, although the ESS Raven is my overall favorite for personal reasons.  I was very happy with how it turned out and promptly blew it up on a C11-3 CATO in the cornfield.  You can see spots in the body tube where the superstructure is little more than paint and decals, but I'll fly it until the inevitable burn through occurs.

This would be a D12-5 flight.  I considered picking up a pack of D12-3s from Merlin, but I decided that I could live with whatever the extra two seconds brought.  Two seconds or not, the flight was one of the best of the day.  In the calm conditions it left the pad on a dead straight path to 773'.  It tipped over at apogee and was heading down and picking up speed when the ejection charge fired.  It recovered on the football field behind us, a soft grass landing.  It was obvious that it had tried to zipper, but no lasting damage was noticed.  Likely a D12-3 bird from now on.

I still had a D12-5 bird in the cage, but for some reason I decided that the next flight would be my long-suffering Mach 10 clone that replaced my first flyable Mach 10 that unfortunately flew off onto the roof of B6-4 School back on Black Sunday of 2003.  This one hadn't flown since 2011, for no other reason than the chronic unavailability of B4-2 motors in the area and my forgetting to check for B4-2s when I was motor shopping elsewhere.

Once again, saved by Merlin Missiles.  Lee only had one pack of B4-2 motors along with a pack of B6-2s, but that would be enough for a refresher on what my three clones fly like on each motor.  This would be the last B4-2, and I'll have a chance to check them out next on B6-2s, so winner all around.    Calm conditions allowed for a boost to 445' and the marker cone was spit back toward the flight-line at ejection.  Glide wasn't perfect, but will only require judicious addition of a few BBs in the belly tank to be more of a consistent glider, such as consistent Mach 10 glides are.

As promised, the next flight would be another D12-5, the New Way Quad Goblin.  I bought this a few years back because I thought I could make a passable DRM clone with it.  Right about the time I finished, New Way came out with the Der SquaRed Max, making mine kind of an orphan.  I was recently working on finishing the SquaRed Max and turned up my version, so I decided to spray it yellow and return it to some semblance of Goblin-hood.

Yeah, those DRM fins.  Shhhh.  It'll be our little secret.  Decals are probably next, and yes, I do know where they are.  I admit, I was surprised when I pulled this out and found the 24mm motor mount, but since the regular Goblin is a 24mm bird, I really shouldn't have been.  I had a D12-5 ready for this one, new in the package from Hobby Lobby with a non-lethal date code.  The Quad Goblin left the pad heading straight, but that didn't last long.  It turned out toward the Shake Shack and accelerated away from the flight-line at an extreme angle.  There were several "uh-ohs" from the crowd, mine included, but after topping out at 967', the ejection charge fired and the QG began riding a full chute back our way.  It recovered deep in the field, secure in the knowledge that it would be my highest flight of the day.

Flight #5 would be the newly painted Custom Ion Pulsar.  I had an Ion Pulsar back in 2002, but it died when the chute fouled on the dowels and the whole mess came down on asphalt.  I tried to rebuild it, but the damage was pretty extreme and it was tossed out around the time that we moved.  This one was picked up via eBay and spent seven years unpainted after the first flight, but I got reinterested in it recently and got it painted.

This flight was much the same as the flight that killed my previous Ion Pulsar.  It left the pad turning to the left a bit, but not enough to cause concern, eventually topping out at 759'.  At ejection the parachute again tangled in the body tobe and it fell fast, but not terminally so.  The chute opened slightly and acted as a parawad, landing to the right and behind the mid-power pads.  When I got to the landing site, I found that one of the dowels had broken off.  I searched the area, but turned up nothing, so it isn't known if contact with the ground caused the loss of the dowel or if it was a rebound of the nose cone.

The US Rockets Scout would be flight #6 on the day.  This is a 24mm capable bird, but I was out of D12s and past experience has taught me that a 24mm motor in a US Rockets minimum diameter rocket at this field is a fool's errand.  The Scout came with an 18mm adapter, so I made use of it, and this flight would be on a C6-5 with the oversized USR streamer.

Not sure what happened here.  This was a standard flight of a BT-50 rocket on a C6-5.  It flew out away from the flight-line to 885' and ejected just as forward motion stopped.  The streamer began streaming behind it and it was drifting toward the soccer fields.  At this point it passed in front of the sun and even with my sunglasses on my eyes couldn't handle the glare.  When my vision cleared, I was no longer able to pick up the rocket, but I knew the general area where it likely would have landed.  Several times over the course of the day I walked the field searching for the Scout, but never saw a trace of it.  I don't know if it drifted further than I thought or was picked up by someone leaving the soccer complex.

The eBay Fury would be flight #8.  I bought a vintage batch of rockets via eBay, none of them kits.  All needed a little work before flying, but I eventually got them all in the air.  This one was one of my favorites of the batch, and I stuck the name Fury on it.  Something about it seemed familiar, and it has something of a Centuri look to it, a bit like a slightly upscaled Vector V with alternate fins and nose cone.  It needed a new shock cord and one of the fin tips repaired, but I've never gotten around to repairing the fin tip.

This was a C6-5 flight, and it sat on the pad through three attempts and three igniters before I scavenged another C6-5 from the MPC Nike Patriot.  This did the trick, and the Fury flight path was much the same as that of the Scout, although not as deep into the field.  It topped out at 783' and ejected at apogee.  The chute ejected, but it was an old Semroc chute and stuck together despite being freshly powdered.  Unlike the Scout, it recovered on the right side of the field near the access road, undamaged despite the fouled chute.  

The next flight would be my vintage Estes Odyssey on a C6-5.  The Odyssey was one of the rockets in my 1970's fleet, but I built it and never flew it.  That always stuck in my craw, so when I got back into the hobby in 2001, I checked eBay for an Odyssey and eventually paid the then hefty sum of $27 for the vintage kit.  It flew a couple of times in 2003, incurring damage on the second one.  It then sat for the next 21 years until I found it and fixed it a couple of weeks back.

This would be a C6-5 flight and was pretty much textbook from the start, straight off the pad to 665', a perfect deployment at apogee, then a surprisingly damage free recovery on the right side of the field.  My experience with this rocket has been that you should plan for fin damage on each flight, but this one survived unscathed.

This is my second Estes Flutter-By, the first one having transported to an alternate dimension when I tried flying it at B6-4 Field on a B6-4.  That one had been painstakingly sanded and painted, and actually turned out looking great.  I wasn't quite so painstaking with this version.  (Hence the orange peel paint.)  It's kind of a fire & forget kind of bird, but a fun one.

This would be a B6-4 flight.  I was tempted to try it on a C6-5 since the field is so large, but I was out of them at home when I was prepping.  The B6-4 was more than enough.  The flight topped out at 562' and the two halves separated as they were supposed to.  We began tracking the halves and someone mentioned that one half was gliding.  I followed the gliding half, and it flew back over the flight-line and was heading out over the football field when I realized I was tracking a bird.  While the bird and I were having our moment, I happened to see the upper half land just in front of the mid-power pads.  I went back and found it, then found the orange half 30' away.  I'd rather be lucky than good.

The Estes Comet Chaser would be up next.  I always liked the looks of this one, but it is really too small to fly at B6-4 Field on an 18mm engine.  This one reminds me of the old Estes D.O.M. plan, the Loadlifter 1-A.  Both are cool designs, but both would make great upscales.

I have no idea what to say about this flight, a B6-6 powered flight that left the pad and disappeared.  No amount of scanning the skies by the entire flight-line brought a sighting of the rocket, even with a Mylar streamer.  When the range was safe I began walking the field, looking for any sign of the rocket.  I was about to give up when a flash caught my eye from the grass.  Usually this means a piece of candy wrapper, after all, this is a practice facility for kids, but in this case it was the streamer.  I felt fortunate to find it.

The MPC Nike Patriot was the rocket that I scavenged the C6-5 from for the eBay Fury flight, so I gave it a try with the C6-5 that came out of the Fury.  First I went through my car trying to find a paperclip or something else that I could use to scrape the inside of the propellant base, but found nothing.  I decided to give it a try anyway, just because I wanted to see it fly in full livery.  All it did was cost me another igniter, so I went to see Lee at Merlin Missiles and did some rocketry commerce for a fresh pack of C6-5s.  (Note to self: put a paperclip in the range box.)

Being an MPC rocket and thus heavy on plastic parts, this is kind of a flying pig, and the C6-5 struggles a bit to lift the bulk.  Whenever I fly it, I'm reminded of the "slow, realistic liftoffs" claim of the Big Bertha.  This flight actually wiggled as it cleared the rod, but quickly straightened out and eventually reached 623' out over the right of the field.  It was tipping over as it ejected and the chute didn't pop cleanly because the rocket was busy trying to wrap itself into it, but it eventually straightened everything out and recovered along the sidelines of the football field.  The MPC chute is a lot like the rocket itself, clunky, but effective, and everything was in fine shape after the flight.

I picked up an Estes Space Racer at a local hobby shop, not because I wanted to build it, but because I wanted to scavenge the nose cone for an Estes Foxfire close.  This was a quick and easy Friday night build, but when I went to print out the decals, they came out as a full sheet despite everything looking like it was set up correctly.  I flew it in primer for a while, then set it aside before trying again a few years later.  This time I got the correct scale on the decals and I flew it a couple of times without the cockpit painted.  Last week I got reinterested in finishing up lingering paint jobs and the Foxfire finally got a canopy.

This is another rocket that is iffy on an A8-3 at B6-4 Field, to the point that I've considered making an adapter specifically for flights up there.  Here at the larger eRockets Field, I felt safe in loading a B6-6 for the flight and was rewarded with a flight directly into the sun to 653'.  Still, I managed to keep it in sight for the whole flight and it recovered safely on the right side of the field.

Several years back I bought a set of resin cones and transitions that were listed as original Canaroc pieces.  I wasn't born tomorrow, so I knew what I was dealing with, but I pulled the trigger on the eBay buy-it-now.  I wound up with the parts for the Maxi Challenger, Black Brant and the Green Hornet.  I made the decals using the checkerboard scan from the Nomad and the Green Hornet script from the instruction sheet and I was very happy with how it all turned out.

The Green Hornet left the pad arcing to the left toward the soccer fields, eventually topping out a 781' and ejecting over the parking lot.  It came back our way during recovery for a nice, soft grass landing out behind the mid-power pads.

From the "seemed like a good idea at the time" file, I present my Der Red Jinx.  I always thought the lines of the Estes Jinx were close enough to the DRM to fake, so I picked up a Jinx from eBay just for the project.  I flew it once as a Jinx, just to say I'd done it.  What I wound up with is a ten-footer.  Any closer and you see how badly the chosen decals matched up with the chosen paint.  It wouldn't matter for long.

Things looked good from liftoff.  The A3-4T flight reached 349', the fly farted, and the whole thing barreled earthward.  Impact happened about 50' from the pad, so the ending was quite audible.  I was expecting bad things, but even I was shocked.  The nose cone and the motor mount had attempted to become one.  The Kevlar, elastic, minimal dog barf and streamer all made for an awful looking sandwich.  Buff it out?  I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get the nose cone out of the body tube.  This is lawn dart art.

Another member of the "too small to fly on an 18mm at B6-4 Field" club is the Estes Crossbow SST, but in this case I did something about it.  I happened to be looking at an Estes catalog on Ninfinger and noticed that the Eclipse was actually a Mini-Brute, which made sense.  I gathered up a few centering rings and BT-5 tubing and corrected my error, and while I was at it, I converted a couple of others.  The Crossbow SST was one of them.

This would be an A3-4T flight, the first on a mini motor.  As I mentioned before, the mini motor conversion was mostly done with an eye toward flying 1.2A3-4T motors at B6-4 Field, but I thought the A3-4T was a reasonable choice for eRockets Field.  It took off in a dead calm, in fact, the whole flight was in calm air.  The flight reached 414' and popped the chute just as it tipped.  The streamer brought it down in a flat orientation and it recovered within 20' and just right of the pad.  

For my final flight of the day, I present the sole survivor of the Rockethead Blink Family, Mama Blink.  I was sent this for review back in 2004 or so.  The family consisted of Mama, Papa and Baby Blink, kind of a new take on the Javelin/Super Flea combo.  Baby Blink disappeared on the first flight, very much in the Estes Streak vein.  Papa Blink didn't deploy fully, found the VOA access road and suffered head trauma.  He later disappeared on a flight at B6-4 Field, leaving Mama to soldier on along through her grief.  She sat on my desk downstairs for 20 years before I decided the time was right for flight #2.

Mama left the pad like the old pro that she is.  Flying on a 1/2A3-4T, she topped out at 358' where the ejection charge fired.  From there things get a little fuzzy.  I looked around wildly, hoping to see any part of the recovery, but I saw nothing.  I thought I'd at least see the Mylar streamer, but if nothing else we learned that this is a folly today.  I wasn't holding out much hope, but I began to walk the right side of the field where she was last seen.  She was well camouflaged, but none of the other blades of grass said MAMA on them.  No hope for the nose cone and streamer as the 20-year-old elastic threw in the towel.  That might be all for the family.

At this point, I still had a rocket in the box, the MRI Lambda 8, but I couldn't remember the name to save my soul.  I was clearly baked, and I still had to function at 7:00 for dinner.  We struck the range to the bare necessities, loaded what we could in Lee's truck, and I left before I remembered the Lambda 8s name.  16 flights is a pretty decent day's work, and my unflown and long time list continues to shrink.