I woke up on Saturday to a perfect flying day, or so it seemed. From my kitchen window the trees on the hill behind us fluttered occasionally in the light breeze. We'd suffered through a long stretch of high temp. high humidity days, but that cycle had broken with a front that blew storms through on Wednesday and Thursday. Stepping outside on the way to work on Friday had been like waking up in a new world, one where the air didn't stick to you. The launchmeister approved.
I'd spent the week painting and prepping, so the plan for Saturday was to sleep in, then hit the field late morning. Scratch that. That was less that old Bill thinking. Old Bill seems to have trouble sleeping beyond 7:30am, which was the case on this day. Maria had hiking plans for the early morning, so when she left after breakfast, all I had to do was throw the rocket tub into the car and head up the street. (Note to all: when I refer to the rocket tub, I don't mean myself.)
B6-4 Field was empty, not a surprise in early August. As I exited the car I noticed the breeze, stronger than it had appeared from my back window. To the right the flag between the fields was hanging limp, while to the left the flags by the school were more active. Perfect! No, not really. I did some calculations and decided that the first flight would tell me a lot.
The first flight would be the Estes D.O.M. Space Freighter, a rear eject 18mm bird I'd recently rediscovered in a neglected rocket tote. I'd flown it once previously at a WSR launch in Huber Heights, then tried and failed to start painting it. Yesterday I gave the nose cone a respray of a less fussy red and pulled the masks off of the payload section before loading the car. Because of this, it was on top of the tote. Because of that, it would hit leadoff.
This was loaded with a B4-2, mostly because I found one on the piano, probably a refugee of a glider flight that was rethought. Whatever the case, it turned out to be a very good choice for conditions. With the rod set straight up, the Space Freighter flight was about perfect. It left the pad leaning to the left, which took it out over US 27. The flight was surprisingly high, topping out at 282'. This would be to its advantage as the breeze would bring it back to the field. The rear ejection worked to perfection and the reefed chute brought it back to the field, easily clearing the wires. It landed within 20' of the pad, and I can begin the process of figuring out the rest of the paint scheme.
Next to see the skies above B6-4 Field would be my recently finished Semroc Mini Explorer. When I say finished, I mean flyable. It has yet to be subjected to the cruelties of Fill n Finish and sanding. This is a simple rocket with a classic silhouette that is right at home at B6-4 Field on an A8-3. Or so I hoped.
This would be the first of four similarly sized Semroc birds to fly on the day. It wasn't planned that way. All were either new or were last flown during the pandemic. The Mini Explorer is new. The A8-3 flight would be my second straight impressive flight on the day, stable off the pad with a lean toward left field, a can-of-corn to 213'. At ejection the same reefed chute from the Space Freighter flight brought it down in left center where the parachute was found to have all but untied from the snap swivel. That quickly I had a parachute crisis on the day.
The third flight of the day would be the FRW Warlord. This rocket has a long history and is wildly porky, so I felt comfortable putting it up on a B6-4 despite the breeze. I don't recall the contest, but it came about as an entry at EMRR, the predecessor to Rocket Reviews. It has gone through at least three makeovers in the past 20 years. Not sure if this is the final version, but I don't have any real ideas for another repaint.
The B6-4 flight was noticeably underpowered, arcing left toward US 27 and ejecting after it had tipped over. It was immediately evident that it had an issue because it was coming down sideways, like a Centuri Super Kit. Looked cool, but it usually resulted in some kind of damage. I lucked out on this flight and it landed in one piece in left field.
Technically, flight #4 is my third Estes Odyssey, the first being my 1978 original that I never flew and the second a 1978 original that I've flown too much. This one is a shop scrap version with the newly designed Estes nose cone from the sci-fi pack. I was shocked back in 2003 when no one at the Quark launch recognized this as an old Estes kit. I might have an exalted opinion of it because the red/white/black paint scheme fits into my paint wheelhouse so well.
I made a couple of mistakes on the day. The Odyssey was the first. It's a decent flier, but it really needs a big field of soft grass to land in. B6-4 Field has some nice fluffy spots in the outfield and on the hill that would be perfect for an Odyssey landing. It never hits them. In this case the B4-4 boost took it to the left off the pad, out over US 27. US 27 isn't fluffy. Things might not have gone as bad as they did if the parachute hadn't been lethargic about opening, but that was how things were written in this script. The Odyssey didn't recover as much as it fell; straight down to the unfluffy asphalt. I dropped the launcher immediately and jogged toward the landing area. Two cars passed as I was getting there, but both managed to not hit the rocket. One fin was broken off and hanging limply by the tiniest of delaminated paper threads. Other than that it didn't look too bad. It will be an easy fix and ready for the next asphalt landing.
The halfway point on the morning would be handled by the Semroc Mini Aero-Dart. I actually took this with me to Fripp Island last September but didn't find myself with as much build time as I thought. I did get the Semroc Arcon-Hi flightworthy, but mostly I just read at night.
As with all four of the Semroc birds I launched today, the Mini Aero-Dart would be on an A8-3. It's the perfect motor for 1" diameter rockets here. The M A-D flight was perfect, a light angle out toward the school off the pad, then a perfect chute at apogee and a drift into center field. Did I mention perfect? The profile of the rocket adds to the experience. It just looks the part.
I have quite a few rockets in the fleet that were the result of sitting watching a ballgame surrounded by spare parts and just deciding to build something. The Golden Knight is just such a rocket. It's a scrap of BT-5, a Mosquito nose cone and a spare set of fins from a Custom Metrix. The name came from a local drum corps that some friends were a part of. It had something of a connection to our parish and we used the bus as an ergo-school bus. It was a rusted old hulk with holes in the floor and we'd bring stuff with us to drop out and hit the cars behind us. The things 12-year-olds find amusing.
The Golden Knight would fly on a 1/2A3-4T, which seemed a little strong for the field, but I was out of 1/4As. As it left the pad it confirmed my hunch of it being too strong by completely teleporting to another dimension off the pad. I scanned the skies and saw nothing, but I did hear the ejection charge. I began looking for the streamer. Still nothing. It was about this time that I heard the unmistakable sound of something hitting concrete off to my right. I actually turned quick enough to see the GK resettle after rebounding from the impact with the sidewalk up by my car. Apparently, the motor blew from the body without ejecting the nose cone. You know the rest. The Golden Knight is likely retired, but it will be significantly shorter if it ever flies again.
As I remember it, I built the Semroc Stellar Spartan at lunch over the course of a week at work back when I still worked nights. Most of the time, builds like this are done without consulting the instructions and completed by feel and experience alone. With this one, I had to use the instructions because I couldn't confidently go my normal route, and I was genuinely surprised when it turned out as nice as it did. Paint was another story entirely, and I somehow failed to screw that up as well.
Since I'd started out 2-2 on my Semroc small field birds, I was pretty sure the string would continue with the Spartan. I was expecting the same A8-3 flight I'd gotten out of the Mini Aero-Dart and Mini Explorer, and I did, right up to the instant of ejection. The flight was surprisingly straight, almost dead overhead and things seemed to be going nicely. At ejection there was an audible "THUNK" and I mentioned that the ejection seemed violent. The Spartan began a twirling trip back to the field with the shock cord looking oddly short. That was concerning because I tend to overcompensate for something by making my shock cords way too long, sometimes comically so. As it came closer to the field, this one looked like I'd used a 2000-era Estes kit shock cord. At landing the issue was obvious. The elastic had stayed balled up and never gave the nose cone the chance to stretch out away from the body. The sound I heard was indeed the nose cone rebounding into the top of the body tube. When attacked, the body tube bit back harshly, taking a chunk out of the cone that will leave a definite battle scar. That's cool. Chicks dig scars. And the long ball, which I only know of because of TV. I had doubles power.
With the breezes becoming more insistent, flight #8 would be another Semroc small field bird, the Lune R-1. I believe this was one that Carl's early Semroc offered, and for the entire time I was at the field on Saturday, I thought I'd mistakenly brought the Semroc Squire. Not sure why I mix these two up as they're really easily distinguishable.
Oscar the Grouch last flew here back in the spring after I rescued him from a garbage bag while on cleanup detail in the shop. He flew on an A10-3 that time, well enough to merit him a second shot at flight glory. As I was packing the tub for this launch, I spotted him in another tote and decided to pack him with a 1/2A3-4. After all, how high could that take him.
Yeah, pretty high. Oscar surprised me by following his own path off the rod, one not trodden by anything else that flew on the day. He left the pad with a slight lean to the right, which put him out 219' over right center field. Impressive flight, but then came the recovery drift. I only worried about it drifting up the hill into the trees for a moment because the breeze lost interest and Oscar immediately began dropping toward the field. As it was, he landed at the very base of the hill. Good thing I was out of A10s today.
This one hurts. With the breezes becoming more insistent and a respectable nine flights in the book, I could have called Oscar the last flight and called it a day. I also could have flown the RTF Patriot that was loaded and ready to go, but no. I decided to take a chance on my 2003 Estes Der Red Max clone on a B4-4. Back when I built this, the parts weren't exactly easy to come by. The Mean Machine was the only production kit that used the PNC-60AH, so I bought one and built my DRM. Decals were another deal entirely. At the time I believe they were available from Tango Papa, but at the same time I was experimenting with inkjet waterslides, so I decided to go that route. Since I only had clear decal paper and white would have been a pain, I decided to back the individual decals with white vinyl shelf paper, which meant a lot of detailed cutting. This was great for a while, but the vinyl shrinks over time, so the waterslide coating shrinks along with it. The result is a very oddly vintage look.
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Things would have been fine had I not run into the parachute issue. Like everything else I'd flown on the day, the DRM chute was popped and refolded just before the flight. It left the pad heading into the breeze and left. It got to a decent altitude before ejecting out over US 27, but like the Odyssey earlier in the lineup, the chute refused to fill and flopped behind uselessly. Had it filled it would have easily crossed the wires and landed somewhere around left center field. As it was it was heading directly toward the wires, and the second last one caught it. As I write this, I'm on my fifth day of driving past hoping it fell. So far I'm not seeing anything to suggest that might ever happen.
If this was a Quinn Martin production, this part would be called EPILOGUE, and it would just be me cussing. I'm going to take the high road and mention that out of ten flights on the morning, one suffered an easily repaired broken fin, one was smashed and shortened enough to likely not fly again, and the DRM could very well be gone. Despite that, I had a good time. The biting flies apparently don't care for my taste unless the humidity is like wet burlap and the only geese diverted to another landing area when they saw trouble on the field. I have a lot of Semroc birds that haven't flown since 2020, so I'm giving serious thought to and all Semroc, all A8-3 launch before the fields are full of football in a few weeks. This weekend is a club launch if there is no rain within 400 miles, so the chances of me having something to say are good. Don't say you weren't warned.
This pic makes me sad.
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