Return to The Grove, July 2, 2026

 Since we last spoke, The Grove has replaced B6-4 Field as my flying field of choice.  It happened out of necessity when I had a day off but found B6-4 Field full of day campers.  I had actually stopped here a month earlier on a windy Sunday but found conditions too breezy for my liking.  I'd flown at The Grove for a while back in the 2000's, but when a local high school repurposed it as a home baseball field and fenced it all in, I made B6-4 Field my semi-permanent residence.  In the years since the school moved everything back to campus and The Grove spends a lot of time looking uncut and unloved.  Best of all, the fence is gone.  I accepted the invitation.

On this day I left work early to kill off some overtime hours, and I had flying on my mind as I made the drive home.  As expected, the 95-degree heat was oppressive, and I made sure to pack a container of PowerAde and an iced tea.  True to form, I found The Grove empty and overgrown.  I set up in deep left-center and chose the Estes Super Alpha as my wind test bird.

I couldn't have picked a better first flight bird, and that's not a recent discovery.  The Super Alpha is one of those rocket that doesn't get grabbed often, but when it does it turns in a flight that makes you wonder why it doesn't get flown more.  This flight was on a B6-4 and was straight from beginning to end.  I didn't have to move the camera anywhere but up.  It topped out at 373', popped the chute as it stopped forward motion and rode gently to the ground.  This is a great kit and should be on every hobby shop peg in the USA.  Pity it's OOP.

My shirt was fully soaked with sweat by the time I chose my second bird, the Estes Rascal.  I'd picked up the Rascal in a bottom dollar starter kit on eBay years ago.  Construction had already started, but things being what they were at the time, it was hard to make out what kind of job had been done on it.  That said, the all important decal was untouched.  Turned out that everything else had been touched, and badly.  The fins were included, having been cut out with a camping knife, also included, and without use of the template.  None matched.  They were all cut out freehand.  The engine hook had been lost, but not to worry, a flimsy piece of wire had been substituted in its place.  The starter set was a shop of horrors and hopefully the last time the builder made a turn down the rocket aisle in the hobby shop.

The Rascal flight was like the Super Alpha flight without the stellar recovery.  It left the pad on a straight path but leaning slightly back over my head.  When I looked up to track the flight I was looking astraight into the sun, and that's where the fun is.  Or not.  I couldn't see a thing and began looking wildly around for what should have been a filled chute at that point.  I picked it back up just before impact.  The chute had tangled in the shock cord and trailed the falling rocket harmlessly to a hard impact with the parking lot gravel to my left.  The Rascal fins are pretty huge, and I expected at least one to be broken, but aside from a few paint chips, all was well.

Flight #3 would be my old buddy the Flight Dynamics Zepher 5, a random eBay purchase from 2007 or so.  I thought it was just a unicorn, but I actually saw another one at the NARAM in 2013, so I know at least two were kitted.  It's got that Baby Bertha-based Goony look to it.

This one went completely off the reservation and took a sharp left off the pad.  Two things were to the left, the parking lot and the woods that bordered them.  Actually, three things, the third being trouble.  The flight topped out over the woods, ejecting as it tipped over at 417'.  The nylon chute filled quickly, but it was about 20' deep in the woods at that point.  The breeze was working in my favor, but it looked like I was going to lose it to the trees.  I can't describe how close it came.  If I found traces of green on the body tube it wouldn't have shocked me at all.  As it was, it landed within ten feet of the tree line.  I was living lucky.

The next flight would be full of questions.  My Estes Interceptor is a clone that I bought piecemeal via eBay about 20 years back.  It was during a time when the only parts available for the project were a BT-55 tube and engine mount, but I found a resin set of the cone, fin tips and tail piece on eBay one night.  I had also previously found a set of decals from another vendor, so once the resin pieces arrived I was ready to go.  It might have been Mike Schmidt (not mike Schmidt,) who sold the resin pieces, and not long after Moldin' Oldies appeared as a source for long OOP cones and parts.  At any rate, I was thrilled with the final product.

 There was a lot to unpack with this flight.  When I first punched the button, nothing happened.  Just as I was about to drop the camera and declare a misfire, it took off.  Somehow, I managed to keep it in frame as it took off, but the flight kicked severely to the right and I was shocked to see it corkscrewing in the direction of Rt. 8.  It also seemed to be burning a lot longer than usual.  It tipped over and began looking like a lawn dart in the making before finally ejecting less than 100' from the ground.  It landed about 15' off the roadway without damage.  When I got to the landing site and pulled the expended engine casing, I was surprised to find that it was a C6-5, which explained the bonus delay somewhat.  Apparently, I had loaded it for flight in Dayton, then punked out due to the heat before I got to fly it.

When I uncinched, I grabbed the Fun Rockets Wicked Winnie.  This bird was a carrier for my first keychain camera many years back and still bears the scars.  It was an impulse grab that day, as I found a pack of B6-4 motors just before I left the house.  I also knew that the cheesy foam parts likely wouldn't be an issue with the humidity.

The Winnie flight didn't turn out to be what I'd hoped.  It headed to the right off the pad and actually wound up over the field behind me.  The flight topped out at 417' and was sideways when the ejection charge fired.  I heard the charge, but it was muffled and indistinct.  Sure enough, Winnie charged toward the ground with the two halves side by side, and the parachute still wedged in the top of the lower body tube.  Impact was pretty brutal, as straight down recoveries usually are.  My semi-educated guess, when I loaded the motor in the tube, I noticed that there was a bit of play and not a tight fit.  It's possible that enough of the ejection gases escaped out the back that they didn't have enough oomph to launch the laundry.  YMMV.

The 2/3 point of the launch would be the Estes Curvilinear, picked because it was recently repaired after being damaged in a shop fall and I had a mini motor on hand.  The Curviliinear has been stellar at B6-4 Field on A10s and A3s, and I like the way it came out.

The Curvilinear would be the lowest level flight on the day, reaching 224', but saying that it was the prettiest flight wouldn't be entirely wrong.  It headed out away from the pad and slightly to the right, ejected at apogee, and popped the chute.  The only issue with the flight was a broken shroud line that brought it back with a noticeable limp.  Bring on the Gimp.

I had to fly a Goony, and with four to choose from, none of which had been flown since 2020, I picked the Zoom Broom.  While I had built the Star Snoop as a BT-80 bird back in 2001, the Zoom Broom was the first one that I built as a 1:1.  I went with an 18mm motor, which took away a lot of recovery room, so I cut out as much of the bottom of the nose cone as possible so that the chute could fit better.

While the A8-3 provides more of a kick off the pad, the small size of the Goons really makes it unnecessary.  This would have been perfect as it was with 13mm power, but at the time I was more interested in power, not tradition.  The Broom swept off the pad to the right, topped out at 283' and popped the chute at apogee.  The chute popped without shroud line drama and it drifted to a perfect recovery in short center.

The Estes Raven would be on pad for flight #8 on the afternoon.  This was another eBay purchase of a rocket corpse much like the Rascal had been.  I bought it to use the nose cone to clone an Estes National Aerospace Plane, only to have it arrive with the decal being the only thing really usable.  The nose cone had been stepped on and required several sessions over a pan of boiling water to work it back into usable shape.  Sometime later I bought a National Aerospace Plane kit and swapped the nose cone back after deciding to build the Raven.  By then it had a serious amount of nose weight from trying to straighten out an awful wiggle in the NASP.  This thing is a pig, but it looks good as it sits on the pad oinking.

This would be a B6-4 flight but probably could have been a C6-3 based on how things went.   The Raven boosted right and looked to be trying to go nose down from the start.  It topped out at 279' and began heading down immediately.  After what seemed like an eternity the ejection charge fired, and it spun around violently when the chute filled.  Recovery was perfect after that with a landing out in the short center weeds.  Good thing it didn't core sample.  It would have taken me weeks to clean up the BBs in the nose.

By this time in the day my shirt had long been soaked and was starting to wick moisture into my shorts.  Every time I bent down a cascade of sweat dripped off my face.  It was so uncomfortable that I would have to go home and let my shirt and shorts dry out for a few hours before heading out to cut the side yard.  I didn't realize it yet, but the Estes Alien Invader would be my last flight of the day.

Speaking of eBay, this was cloned back in the days when the nose cone seemed like more of a myth than an actual part.  I bought two aftermarket cones online, one a solid clear resin that was about 49/50 scale and didn't fit in any standard body tube, the other one was a traditional resin cone seen here.  I had to epoxy a large screw eye into the back end of this one because the loop was clearly not going to withstand many ejection charges if any at all.  The flight was on an A8-3, mostly because I was becoming too tired and hot to consider walking after it.  It was an uneventful flight to 237' with ejection coming at apogee.  It came almost straight back to the pad, landing just at the edge of the parking lot 20 feet from where I stood filming.

The heat was awful, but that wasn't what chased me off the field for the day.  The thing that made me decide to pack it in was an igniter issue.  Up to this point I had used the igniters that came with the motors I'd bought the night before, but that tin ran out and I dipped into the bag of vintage igniters that were in my traveling box.  I tried them in a Mini Max and Goonybird Zero before I realized that, while they still looked viable, they had in fact been attacked by rust and broke off when the igniter plug was put in.  All things considered, I broke things down, packed up and went home to enjoy some well deserved air conditioning.

Little Launch of Horrors - 5-30-26

 I had flown at B6-4 Field on Memorial Day, but that never stopped me from making plans to fly with the Wright Stuff Rocketeers in Huber Heights the following Saturday.  My previous attempt had ended in utter failure three weeks earlier, after which I had a nightmarish drive home, so the drive was what I was least looking forward to this time.  The drive was almost too smooth, which is to be looked at with suspicion around here, and I arrived late because my new laptop had arrived that morning and I couldn't help but to start the process of switching over.

Things were already underway when I arrived, so I got to prepping my first flight, the FRW Sleestak.  Back in the VOA days my old club QUARK had a contest planned, with one of the events being B SuperRoc.  The night before I started grabbing damaged, but still usable tubes and came up with the Sleestak.  Long story short, the contest was rained out and the Sleestak gathered dust in the basement until recently when it caught my eye and demanded a chance at flight glory.  Naturally. I complied.

The moment finally arrived and the Sleestak stood tall on the launch pad with a C5-3 loaded.  I was anticipating a memorable flight and that's exactly what I got.  Sorta.  There was movement up the rod, then fireworks.  The C5-3 had detonated and completely removed itself from the rear of the rocket.  The fireball was impressive, hurtling 20 feet into the air.  The Sleestak went almost that high before executing a perfectly normal recovery.

There was much rejoicing.

Post flight inspection showed scorching up through the rocket where the fireball had travelled.  The bottom section of BT-50 was ripped open at the end where the C5-3 tapped out.  I could fly it again as-is or spend some time splicing a new piece of tube in place and cutting new fins.  Not sure which way I'm going to go with it.

After that mess I was in the mood for some success.  (Although the Sleestak recovering nicely via parachute was a little victory.)  The FRW Maxi Vecto G had been recently repaired and was one that I took to the pad during my previous WSR visit three weeks earlier.  It was loaded with an E12-6, so the idea of another fireball was on the mind of everyone on the flightline.

Nope.  No fireball here.  The E12 lit perfectly and the big Goony took off leaning heavily into the wind, topping out at 811'.  This had been the plan, but it looked like the six second delay was about two seconds too long as it was definitely facing downward as it ejected.  The chute fouled on the fins and what should have been a perfect recovery crashed heavily in the hard grass of the soccer field.  It's repairable but might be relegated to calm days after this.

The Semroc Cyber III would be my third flight of the day.  This was a plan that Carl included in his 1970 Astronautic Modeler portion of the Semroc catalog.  Ninfinger Productions: May 1970 Astronautic Modeler   Ninfinger Productions: May 1970 Astronautic Modeler  I cut out the parts years ago but only made the effort to get everything flightworthy this winter.  AND PAINTED!!!!

This is going to be a tough one to describe.  The Cyber III was loaded with a B6-0/A8-0/A8-5 for the shakedown flight.  It started up the rod, then stuck for a moment, then restarted up the rod.  The B6-0 staged as it cleared the rod, then the A8-0 staged a few feet later.  The A8-5 did what it was supposed to do and completed an odd but successful flight.  Altitude was 447' and recovery was handled by a length of streamer.  Successful flight?  Not in the traditional sense.  Flight #4 wouldn't provide me with one either.

The T.H.O.Y. Wren would be another E12 flight.  It last flew here in 2023 and was in the repair queue ever since.  That was an E12 flight that looked great until recovery when the rocket landed on the gravel of the soccer parking complex and destroyed two fins.  It was one of the birds that I finished during a holiday weekend when flying was out of the question over the winter.

This flight of the Wren looked great until recovery.  (Wait, I've heard that before.)  The E12 powered it to 962' and everything was perfect until it failed to clear the grave parking lot by about three feet. One of the fins snapped in half.  The other got butchered by the gravel.  I'm retiring in October, so hopefully the repair window won't be three years this time.

Flight #5 would be the MRI Zenith Two.  It had been an MPC Zenith 2 Payloader, but lost the payload section on the first flight.  It was one of the rare eBay rescue birds that needed nothing done to it.  After the first flight I replaced the missing payload section with a Semroc nose cone and it was ready to fly again.

The ZT was loaded B6-0/B6-6, which I felt was a conservative load considering the winds we'd dealt with on the day.  Not even close.  Had I gone B6-0/A8-5 things might have turned out different, but if a frog had wings it would be my uncle.  Something like that.  The flight itself was impressive, windcocking left off the pad over the soccer fields and staging quickly.  The sustainer continues on, but on a straighter path than I'd hoped, topping out at 683'.  I lost it in the clouds, but several others along the flightline continued to track it as it passed over us, far higher than expected.  I picked it up again after it passed through the sun, and that was when I realized that the sustainer would follow the payload section into oblivion.  It was last seen floating far above the trees across Rip Rap Road.  Fair winds, Zenith.

Surely, flight #6 would be my first successful flight on the day.  It would be Jet Freak 3, my oldest surviving Freak.  Loaded with an A8-3 for the big field, I noticed that the washer that I'd taped on the rear end of the wing was loose and I pressed it back into place as I loaded it onto the launch rod.

So much for that.  The boost was perfect and surprisingly high.  No, scratch that.  The first Jet Freak flight at B6-4 Field several years back wound up boosting high over the telephone pole on Woodfill Avenue, then sailing off to the south, disappearing over Grant Street.  That had been an A8-3 and was the reason I loaded it with one here at the big field.  It topped out at 316' and did a few acrobatic rolls before settling into a death dive into the gravel soccer lot.  As soon as I saw the nose-down attitude, I knew the washer had likely fallen off.  Sure enough, it was nowhere to be found.  I'll likely epoxy the next one in place.  Despite the hard hit in the gravel, there was no damage.

Flight #7 would mark the halfway point of my day, and it was particularly brutal.  This would be the third flight for the Estes D.O.M. Space Shuttle JPZ-3 and I'm clearly still in the figuring out stage.  Well, more like the WTF stage.

Like I said, particularly brutal.  As it left the pad, the shuttle flight looked fairly normal.  It is somewhat like the Centuri Mach 10 in that it uses a tail fin to induce a loop into the flight.  With the Mach 10 this works best with a fairly steep angle on the launch rod.  I've made over 60 Mach 10 flights over the years, some inspiring, some terrifying.  Most of the inspiring flights came after realizing that the rod needed to be angled for flight.  That would have been a great realization to have before sending the Shuttle up again.  It boosted straight, then suddenly banked to the right, entering a long, sloping flight to the ground.  The crash scene was pretty unpleasant as the Shuttle wound up in seven pieces.  The damage isn't bad enough to be fatal, but it will be out of action for an extended period.

Flight #8 on the day would be another of my eBay rescue birds, an Estes Pathfinder, a satisfyingly chunky 24mm powered bird from the mid-80's.  Even though it was a fairly modern bird it had a strange quirk, in that the builder must have been a classic era rocketeer based on the recovery method.  He actually mounted the shock cord using the two slits cut in the body tube method.  Interesting quirk.

This would be a D12-5 flight and likely would have been perfect had I thought to angle the rod, but things turned out okay.  It boosted into the wind to 728' and the ejection charge fired just as it tipped.  It had boosted somewhat to the left, but at ejection it was clear that it had not been far enough to the left.  It raced across the flightline, still quite high above us.  Doing the eyeball geometry, I calculated that it would land somewhere near the road, which would have been fine except that there was a baseball game in progress over there.   It landed in foul territory, just to the left of the bench off the first base line.  Two of the kids went over and picked it up.  Dave Combs had a lead on me and got there before I did.  He brought the rocket to me.  The chute was still flapping, and the upper section of BT-55 had been shoved deep into the BT-60 main tube.  When I tried to pull it out it didn't initially come out.  The nose cone had been shoved into the top of the expended motor casing.  When it did come out, there was no damage for all the rough handling, and it will fly again.  Yay, success.

As the day was one where I seemed to be throwing caution to the winds from a literal standpoint, I chose the Rocketarium Viking VK-7 to be flight #9.  It had last flown here at eRockets Field in 2024, a 2xC6-5 flight where one of the motors decided to take the day off.  It has been undergoing repairs and paint since.  And half the decals were lost.  (SMH)

The VK-7 left the pad in a rush, and it was obvious that both motors had lit.  It windcocked to the left slightly, topping out at 834' and launching the parachute just as it tipped over.  This would be the moment of truth and I was momentarily panicked, thinking that I'd pushed my luck too much with the baseball fields.  Not to worry.  The winds had shifted since the Pathfinder flight, subtly, but noticeably.  No longer were they heading dead west, now they blew more southwest, which opened up the whole practice field as a landing area.  The Viking wound up landing dead in the middle of the field.  It was the first time all day that I looked like I had a clue about what I was doing.

The next flight would be another of my eBay rescues, an Estes Cobra that came with different fins that I named Cobra Kai.  It was built with the cluster mount like the Astron Cobra, so for the first flight I loaded it with the standard 3xC6-5 large field load.  2/3 of the arrangement pulled their weight, which caused an impressive skywriting exhibition and a cracked fin.  Six years later it was ready for flight #2.

Yeah, I forgot to take a photo on the pad.  It happens.  This is it just out of the box it was mailed in.

Flight #2 would be a trio of A8-3 motors, specifically to see if flying a cluster at B6-4 Field would be an option.  Like the Viking flight before it, the Cobra Kai left no doubt about all of the motors lighting.  It left the pad heading left as did everything else on the day, topped out at 371', and ejected as it was tipping over.  Recovery occurred in the same area of the field as the Viking, but not as deep.  What the flight showed me was that unless it was a perfectly calm day, there's no way this could fly at B6-4 Field.  Maybe a 3x1/2A6-2?

The Estes Astron Avenger last flew here back around 2019 when it had a CATO on a C6-0/C6-7 load.  The C6-0 CATO'd just off the rod and lit the sustainer, which completed its half of the bargain before catching a rogue branch while approaching the flightline.  It was rescued later in the day after I left the field and I went from thinking about building a new sustainer to thinking about building a new booster.  It looked pretty toasty inside.  As I was prepping for a Dayton trip a few weeks back, I noticed the booster in a tote and thought about just replacing the motor tube since it was what sustained all of the visible damage.  I grabbed an expended motor casing and slipped it in to figure out if the damage was worse than I could see, only to find that the motor slipped in easily and held in position.  I got a B6-0 and a B6-6 and taped them together, then taped then in place in the rocket.  Good as new.

The Avenger was one of my two-stage workhorses back in the VOA days, but I've gotten to the point where I have too many rockets, all of which need airtime, so flight have been scarce of late.  Pity.  It's a great design and has always been a great performer.  This would be no exception.  The B6-0/B6-6 load was perfect for conditions with the rod tilted slightly left.  The Avenger got up and got going quickly, so much so that I didn't catch it staging for a change.  The sustainer topped out at 833' and was recovered straight out from the pads on the practice field.  I was able to pick up the booster on the way out.

I was having good luck with multi-engine birds, so I chose the Semroc Egg Crate as flight #12.  This would be a 2xB6-4 load as a nod to the windy conditions.  One of the kids had earlier flown a Green Eggs and Ham egglofter and had the nose cone come loose at apogee, so it was suggested that I go out into the soccer complex to see if I could find them and give them another flight.  I declined as I didn't want to rob the raccoons of the protein.

The flight was perfect for conditions.  Angled into the wind, it still was almost dead above the pads.  It bull-moosed its way to 518' and popped the chute.  I had been cutting out a 12" chute from one of the Jolly Logic chutes that came in a Semroc kit and realized that there was a lot of material left over.  I didn't want it to go to waste, so I strung it up to make a 24" chute with a 12" spill hole.  Worked like a charm.  Almost too well, as it thermalled quite a way up the practice field and recovered next to the access road.

The Estes Explorer Aquarius would be my next flight.  I had been gifted this kit by Chas Russell at one of the NARCONs we attended back in the early 2000s.  It builds up to be a great looking bird, but it's quite a pig.  This would be a D12-3 flight, the only delay combination that I trust.  I built it pretty fat, with fin bracing and heavy paint.  

After I took the glamour shot, the camera told me I was out of space, so I pulled it down and went back to the car to get a drink and delete some pics and videos.  If I could have just deleted my Memorial Day launch pics all would have been fine, but no.  My new laptop had arrived that morning, so they hadn't been downloaded yet.  Instead, I had to get rid of my cherished collection of dinner receipts and menu pages that the restaurant was too dark to allow me to read.  With that done, I returned to the pad and hooked the EA up again.  This time I had space for the video.  The flight was pretty standard, but after the mess I made earlier, that was a relief.  The flight was surprisingly straight, almost dead above the pads to 672'.  It was still moving forward at ejection, so a D12-5 likely would have been fine.  (I kept seeing the rocket crashing back to earth because the extra two seconds were too much.)  Recovery was deap behind the pads out in the practice field.  Perfectamundo.

I was at the end of my rope and so was the launch.  I chose one last flight to make it 14 on the day, the Estes Guardian.  I apparently bought several Guardians at some point because I have several Guardian stickers.  I think I found the disparate pieces for this one, nose cone, transition and fin sheets spread all around the shop a few years back and threw this together on a "feel like building something" night.  I'm not sure why the small forward fins didn't make the cut.  I'm not even sure I had them.  I had decal ideas for this one, but the night before this launch I decided I wanted to put the Guardian stickers on so it didn't feel quite so nekkid.  They had no stick left to talk of.  They almost seem like they're being held on by static electricity.  Whatever the case, I took this on pad pic and my phone again said no room in the inn.  I tried deleting some pics, but found out that not only was I out of space, I was out of power.  I gave up.  White flag.  The Guardian would have to fly without a launch pic.  C6-5 flight to 481' with a recovery drift to the back of the practice field.  The range was being struck when I returned.

Interesting day.  14 flights, but 22 motors used.  I don't think that I've ever had that many multi-stage and cluster birds flown together in one launch before.  Five rockets were damaged.  Four severely.  One went over the rainbow bridge to see Dorfy and Toto.  Pretty good day of flying and as I sit typing this my upper arms are peeling like a snake.  Reminder: You not only have to bring sunscreen.  You also have to apply it.  Tomorrow is my next shot at flying, but it will have to be early in the day as there is grass to cut and rain to come late in the day.  If that doesn't happen, next Saturday is another WSR launch.  My cup overfloweth.