Not the Boss of Me launch, 9-3-26

 The current tote of prepped rockets have been ready to go since my last launch a few weeks back, but things kept me from getting to The Grove to fly on the weekends.  Because of this I made the decision then that the next launch would be September 3.  I retired on September 2, so it made the choice obvious.

September 3 was a flamethrower.  At one point in the afternoon the temp gauge in my car showed 100, but I had already done my flying before things got to that point.  I made it to the field by 10am, when the temps were only 90.  The good news, The Grove had been mowed.  The bad news, it was 90.

First flight of the day would be FRW Wizard 1.34x, a BT-50 upscale of my favorite Estes altitude bird.  Several years back I went on a tear building multiple tube sizes of my favorite Estes rockets.  This might have been inspired by Carl doing a Cherokee C.  I have BT-5, BT-20, BT-50 and BT-80 Wizards.

True to form, this Wizard flight really surprised me.  My first Wizard back in 1979 was like that, fired from my front yard on a C6 and topping the church at the top of the street by several hundred feet.  It eventually landed in a gutter in the two-family at the top of the street, then was destroyed by a storm that moved in before we could get Grandpa's Bell ladder out.  This one on a B6-4 topped out at 523' after boosting to my right and heading out to the highway.  The chute I chose was a very vintage Estes orange and white chute with most of the center cut out, and came out of one of my eBay rescues.  The Wizard drifted back toward me for what seemed like forever and eventually landed just behind me about 20 feet from the pad.  Impressive.

If nothing else, the day got off to a great start.  Flight #2 would be the FRW Goony Vector G.  I flew this fairly recently, but since that flight I made the switch to fleet colors, so I wanted to get it documented.

Unfortunately, the fluorescent orange paint doesn't pop on camera like it does in person.  It's really quite bright.  Whatever the case, the Vector G left the pad leaning slightly away from me and flew to 331', popping the chute just as upward motion slowed.  Recovery path was also relatively straight, but it came down on the edge of the parking lot and the nose cone hit my car.  This is why I can't have nice things.

The Estes Solar Probe is one of the rockets crushed many years ago during the William Incident where a neighbor found me flying at B6-4 Field and came down to have a look.  He wanted to know if he could come down and help out, so I told him to ask his Mom.  Mom dutifully showed up, which was a great relief to me.  After pushing the button for a couple of flights, William decided that he wanted to recover some for me.  He took off as soon as the chute popped on his chosen rocket, and stepped straight into the tote that I'd used to bring the rockets to the field.  Mom was mortified.  William was afraid.  I was laughing so hard that I was doubled over.  Mom wanted to pay for the damage.  William couldn't stop apologizing.  I told them that it was all a part of small field flying.  The damage became evident at home.  He'd damaged several birds badly enough that they'd need to be rebuilt, the Solar Probe being one of them.  I replaced the fragmented fin and straightened out the body tube as well as I could.  A couple of weeks ago I did the masking and was lucky enough to find the same red paint in my drawer.  (Likely the same can.)  You really have to look close to see the damage.

I should mention that this one wasn't a clone.  It was an original that I picked up from Penn Valley Hobbies back in 2009.  A late night shopping spree in the eBay store.  Man, I miss those days.  This would be a B6-4 flight.  Dead straight off the pad to 318' and a perfect recovery on the overly-reefed chute.  Landed just to my left and all the repairs held up.

By flight #4, the FRW Satellite Regent, the flies had discovered my presence.  Sweat was running off me in streams, but I can handle that.  The flies were another matter entirely.  I was starting to wish I had a tail.  The Satellite Regent, a Custom Satellite Drone that I made an error on while paying more attention to a ball game, hasn't been a frequent flyer, mostly because it never got past the "body in white" construction phase.  Last week I noticed it sitting on the floor in really old primer and decided to give it the fleet paint job.  I had some trouble with the ring fin holding paint but eventually got it to look acceptable.  From a distance.

The photo doesn't do it justice.  Believe me, this thing glows in the tote.  This would be a B6-4 flight with the aforementioned vintage chute.  Dead straight to 327', then a leisurely recovery just to my left.  Pretty decent for a reclaimed screw up/

Orange, white and black ruled the day, and the next rocket on the pad was right in step with the trend, the Semroc Tau Zero.  This was Jay Goemmer's project from the start to finish back when Carl still roamed the earth.  Mine was actually a pre-production prototype, sent to me to see if it was idiot proof.  Until today it was.  (To be fair, the failure likely had more to do with brittle, 20 year old glue than anything.)

The A8-3 flight was as expected, quick off the pad to 289' and a fairly straight flight path.  It tipped to the left at apogee and fired the ejection charge almost immediately.  From that point it became obvious that there was an issue as the body came straight down into left field and the nose cone, parachute and shock cord hung in the heavy air.  I followed the body to the ground, then had trouble picking up the chute again.  It had fallen fast than expected and was already below the trees.  The nose cone was my big worry as I'm not sure eRockets still stocks it, but when I located it, it was obviously not in danger of drifting into the woods.  Postmortem showed the Kevlar had unknotted itself and slipped away from the engine block, a fairly easy fix.

Back when every Hobby Lobby trip meant that I would come home with an Estes Mini Max, I first contented myself with building an army of Maxi in every color of the paint drawer.  Then I was struck with inspiration and realized that there was a sadly neglected variant out there that was possible by just scavenging a piece of BT-50 from the parts bin.  Thus was born the Mini Big Red Max.

Did I do a terrible job of setting this shot, or what?  In my defense I was doing serious battle with flies that seemed to think my calf and ankles were prime cuts.  I had decided that it would be a ten flight day, biting flies or heatstroke bedamned.  This would be my only mini-engine flight of the day, an A3-4.  At B6-4 Field this would have been a 1/2A3-4 flight and I'm liking the upgrade.  It was a fairly uneventful flight, a quick, straight jaunt to 262', then an equally quick streamer recovery that landed within ten feet of where I stood.  The hard landing has me thinking that this would be better served with a parachute on future flights.  Something small and mostly spill hole.

Yeah, there had to be a Goony and you knew it.  In the Parthenon of Goons, the Star Snoop, Missile Toe and Sky Shriek were my favorites, with the Galaxy Guppy, Zoom Broom and Cloudhopper a tier down.  The only original I ever had was a Cloudhopper, bought off of a clearance table in front of a Kay Bee Toy & Hobby at a mall in Lexington, KY.  Today I chose the Sky Shriek.

When I first started cloning the Goons, I had an internal conflict about the 13mm vs. 18mm power source.  I had convinced myself that it would be better to upgrade to 18mm, but I had failed to take into account the reduction in space for a recovery system.  I solved this by cutting away a lot of the nose cone base and packing the chute in there.  Turns out I could have just stayed with 13mm power, kept the recovery system as is and had pretty much the same performance.  I mean, does a Goony really work as an altitude record bird?  Whatever the case, this would be an A8-3 flight, a quick flight to 237' with an equally quick recovery to within twenty feet of where I stood.  Goony in a stovepipe.

I have an interesting history with the Estes Red Dawg.  In my early QUARK days, our president brought one to my first VOA launch.  It experienced a CATO as it left the pad, and dropped to the ground in front of me, still aflame.  Mark screamed "STEP ON IT!"  I just stood there and watched it burn.  He came over and applied the boot, then yelled at me for not stomping the conflagration.  My excuse was that I don't step on another man's rocket.  "Yeah, I get that," was his reply.  

I'm going to get out in front of this right now.  No, I would not have to stomp my Dawg on this flight.  This would be a B6-4 flight, like most on the day.  In this case, I would likely have been better off with a B6-6.  The Dawg left the pad heading slightly right and away from me and topped out at 383' while still moving up.  There was nothing initially from the parachute, and it fell almost 100' before the chute filled.  From that point it was a typical recovery and landed across the parking lot just off the gravel.

Flight #9 would be the Quest Harpoon AGM on a B6-4.  I picked this up as an afterthought a decade ago and built it on one of those no flying weekends that we all suffer through.  To my surprise, it was a great build and to my greater surprise, it really looked great when finished.  This would only be flight #3 for it in the decade plus I've owned it, but that was due more to the sheer volume of rockets in my fleet than anything else.

I didn't spare the paint on the 'Poon, so it's a bit on the piggy side.  The B6-4 flight left the pad fairly slowly and flew straight to 283'.  It tipped to the left at apogee and ejected as it was sideways, then fell a good distance before the chute filled.  It was the same reefed Estes chute that handled the bulk of my recoveries on the day and it brought things back to the field just to my left.  

By this time the flies had sounded the alarm to the rest of the brigade that there was good eatin' in The Grove.  I thought about calling things at nine flights, but ten was what I had decided on earlier, so I cast an eye to my tote for something quick and easy.

Does it get quicker or easier than an Estes Alpha VI?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still nursing a grudge against the previous owners of Estes for not producing a 50th anniversary kit of some kind.  Inexcusable.  The 60th anniversary Alpha VI was along the lines of what I'd expect, maybe in gold.  This isn't a frequent flier, this being just the second flight.  The A8-3 flight was a quick pop-up to 243' and a perfect corkscrew recovery.  It landed ten feet away from where I had the rest of the victims lined up for the post launch photo.  Boffo.

Much to the chagrin of the flies, I had the pad struck and heading for the trunk of my car within a minute.  I was thinking about an iced tea and some air conditioning, stat.  The ten launches give me 140 on the year, a respectable total considering that the launch window for 2026 didn't open until May.  This puts me into striking range of my top five flying seasons ever.  My most ever was in 2020 when I had 242 flights.  I did a lot of socially distant flying at B6-4 Field, not entirely different from what I'm now doing in The Grove.  I don't see myself managing 102 more flights in 2026, but just normal numbers should make this year my second most ever.  20 flight days could be the norm, especially after the seasons change and the biting bugs return to hell.  My list of "gotta fly" birds is over 100, so there should be no shortage of victims.    

Left unsupervised launch, 8-16-26

 With my wife out of town visiting our daughter in the Apple, it stood to reason that I'd work in a launch at some point during the weekend.  Rain dotted the forecast every day, but it left several windows of prime flying weather in the hot part of the day.  Saturday was my first choice, but I found it too windy when I arrived at the field.  That meant the launch window fell to Sunday by default, and while the breeze was still present, it was no longer strong enough to be a risk to recovery in The Grove.

While the weather window was wide open, the field conditions were another story.  It had pretty clearly not been cut since my last visit, and possibly the last two visits.  Parts of the outfield had knee high weeds, which made me worry about the possibility of ticks.  I survived my years at VOA, a noted tick haven, but I was younger then, and not quite so concerned with things like staying alive.  With my retirement countdown now down under twenty days, I was beginning to take notice of things like blood sucking parasites.

It was warm when I started, but the overcast skies kept it from being uncomfortable.  The first flight of the day for me would be the Semroc Groonie Star Snoop.  At one time I had plans for a whole lineup of Groonies, but eRockets stopped making the BC-1828 cone.  I managed two, one being the Star Snoop because it was the first Goon I upscaled back in 2001.  Like the bulk of my flights on the day, this would be on a B6-4. 

To say I was surprised at the Groonie would be understating the obvious.  The flight was dead straight and quite a bit higher than expected, topping out a 332'.  It jinked around on the way up like a fin was out of alignment, but I think the issue might have been with the winds being a lot more stout above the trees.  At any rate, the chute ejected, but failed to open.  This might have been a good thing as a full chute may have taken it across Rt. 8 to the railroad property.  As it was, it landed hard in right field.  My recovery walk took me through much of the knee high weeds and I checked carefully for tiny travelers after returning to the pad.  

Flight #2 would be the FRW Marauder XL.  This bird started out life as an Estes Polaris upscale, but just before I started the paint job it was pointed out to me that the Polaris was just an ugly version of the Coldpower Marauder.  With my noted predilection toward orange, black and white, I went with the Marauder paint and decals scheme.

Much in the same vein as the Star Snoop, the Marauder ripped off the pad.  The flight wasn't quite so straight after a pad adjustment, so it arced behind me slightly on the way up and topped out at 357'.  As is normal for me, after a perfect flight comes an imperfect recovery and this one also returned parawad, deep in the tickish area.  I pressed onward.

The third flight was where a strange issue developed.  As is my custom, I take an on-pad glamour shot, then switch to video mode for the flight.  Flight #3 would be the first flight of my Estes Skybolt clone under 18mm power.  I always thought that 24mm power was a stretch for this one, but I only recently began building adapters.  The B6-4 flight was my first flight that was perfect end to end on the day.  Boost was excellent, leaning slightly behind me and topping out at 356'.  Parachute was perfect and drifted out toward Rt. 8 as hoped.  It was then that I noticed something was amiss.  When I went to stop the video, the camera started rolling instead of stopping.  It's nothing new.  I've done it before, but I was pretty sure I'd done everything right this time.  No matter.  All that I have to document this flight was the glamour shot.  I chalked it up to fat finger and moved on.

Next up would be the Estes Phoenix Bird, one of the oddest reissues in the Estes universe.  Despite still having the capability to do the old Centuri kit justice, the decision was made not to use the BT-56 fin can, nose cone and body tube and to recreate the Phoenix Bird as BT-55 kit with balsa fins.

Well, after a one flight respite, I was back to recovery issues.  The good news is that the camera worked this time.  The Phoenix Bird flight was a copy of the Skybolt right up until the time the parachute decided to only partially deploy.  Altitude was excellent, topping out at 361', but the excellence ended there as the chute flopped listlessly all the way to touchdown just to my left, thankfully short of the tall weeds.

At the 1/3 point of the day, I had the FRW Spartan Plus, an early attempt at a Bo-Mar Spartan that didn't quite come out right.  Since it was finished and flyable I grafted another piece of BT-50 in place to try to get the proportions right and flew it anyway.  I recently masked it off for paint and found a can of Safety Red in my paint cabinet.  It's a nice red.  Nothing about it screams safety to me, but it worked in this case.  A rarity on the day, this would be an A8-3 flight.  Unfortunately, it would also be a flight where there was nothing but a glamour shot to show that it made a flight on this day.  The Spartan headed to the right and slightly behind me off of the pad.  After topping out at 319' it ejected a perfect streamer and returned to the field just short of the tick kingdom.  One of my better overall flights on the day.  As it landed, I reached up to turn the camera off, only to find it was never on.  This time I knew I had hit the button and had seen it indicate that it was recording.  The rest of the day would be a roulette game with the camera.

Flight #6 would be the Estes Magician.  The Magician, not the Magician.  Hope that clears things up.  This would be another 24mm rocket using the 18mm adapter, and like the Skybolt, probably should have been 18mm powered all along.  This was a clone with Excelsior decals and I should get around to adding the rest of the stars any day now.

B6-4 flight.  The Magician leaned to the right as it left the pad and turned into a bunny.  No, that would be cruel.  (Unless the bunny had a parachute.)  The flight topped out at 293' and recovered out near the infield where the ticks and other assorted bloodsuckers hang out.  Recovery was flawless, one of the best on the day, and I earmarked that particular nylon chute for used on several other flights.

I picked up two Estes Vindicators as the only bidder in a long ago eBay auction and between the two, I managed to make one almost decent looking bird.  One was severely roached with a bent body tube, but a passable set of fins.  The other one had a decent body tube, but the fins looked like they'd been subjected to a Steve Austin landing.

Like most of the flights on the day, the Vindicator flight was almost dead straight, surprising considering the steady breeze.  It was so straight that I had a tough time getting an angle on it to film the flight.  It topped out at 286' and recovered on the same hot pink nylon chute that the Magician (not the Magician) had used, landing in the bug zone, but not terribly deep.  Small favors.

And now for something different, a Magician.  (Not the Magician.)  Unlike the previous Magician, this one was actually made to fly on 18mm engines.  That said, it doesn't get out very often.  I know what you're thinking.  I've seen those fins somewhere before.

Couldn't ask for more out of the flight.  It leaned right and behind me at liftoff, ejecting as it was still heading up at 311'.  The chute failed to deploy, but that was because it was still in my pocket.  The Magician handled it like a champ, waving a wand and recovering just in front of me and to the right a few feet into the blood bank.  TA-DA!

Life with the Empire Bomarc has been interesting to say the least.  This would only be the fifth ever flight on it despite me having owned it for 20 years, and the first one since an infield plowing flight at B6-4 Field on a B6-4.  Yes, that's 13 years of dust on it.

Thirteen years between flights happens for a reason, but it also causes one to forget the tendencies that led to that absence from the pads.  I remembered quite quickly.  The Bomarc struggles mightily on a B6-4.  In this case it moved lethargically up the rod and to the right.  Total altitude was 161', clawing the whole way.  It tipped over and began racing back to the field, with the parachute not ejecting until about the 70' mark.  Other than that it was a perfect flight. 

 

Wow, I cut this one a little close.  In my defense, the sun had returned by the time the PDR Starlab hit the pad and I really couldn't see what I was photographing all that clearly.  This is a tough rocket to love because of the limited space for a recovery system, but I've found that a strategically packed 12" chute works perfectly.  Unfortunately, the camera didn't work near as perfectly, failing to record video despite my verifying that it was working when I pressed record.  Yes, it is about time for a new phone.  The Starlab flight was all I could have asked for, straight off the pad to 318' and dead overhead ejection.  The shock cord fouled on the fiddly bits and brought it down horizontally.  (I meant to do that.)  Would have made a great recovery pic.  Landed to my left, slightly out in the abattoir.

Everyone has multiple Big Bertha's, right?  I bought my first one for my son in 2001, bought a second because I wanted to replicate the 1969 catalog paint scheme and a third because I had a set of 2x18mm cluster centering rings that I wanted to use.  This one I bought just because it was cool.  It was an opened 1980ish version with the long stuffer tube, two piece nose cone and a low "Buy It Now" price.  I complied happily. 

The "Spirit of '77" Bertha flew on a B6-4.  Once again, an almost straight flight, to the point that I kept overbalancing trying to keep the rocket in frame.  Topping out at 284', Bertha popped her chute and recovered slightly to my left.  Attagirl.

I was nearing the bottom of the tote, so several of the next few flights would be on booster motors, usually C6-0s, but one surprising and puzzling B6-0.  The Centuri Alien Scoutship Flying Saucer is as advertised, an actual Centuri bird.  I picked it up along with another partial kit several years ago and was able to get a complete kit together between the two.

During Covid when I was doing socially distant launches at B6-4 Field, I flew a lot of saucers because I could plug in a comparatively large motor yet not have to worry about overflying the field.  This would be a C6-0 flight and I wasn't worried about overflying the field here either.  With the breeze now becoming more insistent, the CASFS left the pad heading back toward the parking lot to 152'.  At burnout it immediately flipped and began drifting toward the bloodsuckers in deep left field for a perfect landing.

I'm embarrassed to admit that since the last time I flew the Estes Thor-Agena B back in 2021, no progress has been made on a permanent paint and decal job.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that this will all change in four working days. 

When I flew it in 2021, I made the mistake of choosing an A8-3 for the flight.  Lesson learned.  Today would be on a B6-4 as it should have been in 2021.  (Actually, the wise move would have been to wait for a trip to Dayton as a B6-4 would likely have overflown B6-4 Field.)  This was an excellent flight, quick and straight off the pad with a lean to the left as it approached apogee.  Ejection occurred just as it slowed down and the pink nylon chute did the normal excellent job of recovery, which happened fairly deep in the tick haven in short left center field.

As I finish this blog entry, I'm doing the typing at the same remote location where I built the Semroc Jupiter B post-Covid.  It was a quick build, with all the gluing done in my eight hour shift.  Like the Centuri Saucer, this would be a C6-0 flight and would be no threat to overfly the field.  

There's something to be said for simple flights, which is exactly what the Jupiter B delivered.  The flight was excellent in both boost and altitude, dead straight off the pad to 182' and quickly returning to the waiting ticks in center field.

The Estes Falcon Commander made it to the pad the last time I was flying in The Grove, but suffered from igniter issues that combined with my overheated state to negate any chance at flight glory.  Same motor, new igniter for this eBay rescue bird.  In all the excitement over the impending A8-3 flight, I forgot the on-pad glamour shot, so we'll just have to make do with the liftoff.  This thing was a basket case when I received it, but now you could mistake it for the finished work of any semi-talented, ADHD addled 7th grader.  The flight was as expected, dead straight and surprisingly high, topping out at 214' dead overhead.  Recovery was likewise perfect and the drift took it deep into the feeding trough toward Rt. 8.

The final flight of the day was brought as an afterthought.  I picked up the Estes Hex 3 last year on clearance at Hobby Lobby.  It's a fairly nothing cardstock saucer that I thought would be a great candidate for flights at B6-4 Field.  I thought right.  Unfortunately, while they have entertainment value, they're also fragile and I recently found it in one of my totes with one of the fin booms torn off.  After regluing I left it sitting on the tote and just grabbed it before I left for the field.  I didn't expect it to fly today.

No idea why, but this C6-0 bird was loaded with a B6-0 for this flight.  Kind of a waste on a field of this size and depth.  The flight was as expected, a quick pop-up to 143' and a perfect landing just slightly into the feeding zone.

That emded a fairly good day's work.  It would be an extremely successful day in that nothing would be left in the trees or brought home with damage more complicated than a loose fin.  I finished with sixteen flights in just over an hour and a half.  I was never rushed and I found no tiny hitchhikers on me when I got home.  My next chance to launch will be coming up in a few days.  I'll be working Monday through Wednesday this coming week, then I'll shuffle off, ending my days as a working stiff and becoming a full-time flyer.  Looking forward to my new career.