The plan was to start the last full week of vacation as a working stiff with a trip to The Grove to fly my latest box of rockets. I planned well. Well, sort of. The original plan had been to get up early and get down to the field before the day got too hot, and I stuck to the plan for about fifteen minutes. Then I went back to bed and slept until 9:30. This caused me to start flying in the heat of the day, but being that waking up at 4:30am is going to one of the daily habits I cast off soon, I can't fault the idea.
Like a lot of the rest of the country, we're going through a stretch of "weather you wear" in the Cincinnati area. Loading the car had me sweating, so a rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof and made the best of the short drive to The Grove. It was empty and mostly unkempt looking, not having seen a mower in some weeks based on some of the corn-sized weeds that were overtaking the outfield. The dew was still heavy on the weeds, and my shoes were soaked by the time I settled on a spot to set up. Perfect. Lessened the chance of fire.
I had spent the day on Sunday prepping a box of about 25 birds for flight, so everything in the box had an in the box had an igniter in it already. First flight of the day would be the Estes D.O.M. Orbital Transport Laboratory which hadn't flown since a shakedown flight back during the pandemic.
A8-3 flights in BT-60 birds at B6-4 Field had taught me that this was a recipe for disappointment, so I had packed the OTL with a B6-4, which turned out to be an excellent choice. I'd deliberately set up further back from the action to catch more of the rocket leaving the pad. On this flight I failed spectacularly as the OTL got up and out very quickly. The flight was nicely straight and topped out at 327', still moving up at ejection. This was when one of the bugaboos of my fast start came home to roost. I'd failed to fluff the chute before the flight and it reacted to its five year hiatus by remaining curled in the ball it started out in. The parawad recovery was fairly quick, as expected, and the landing impact fairly hard. When I got to the landing site I found that one of the glue joints that connect the fin to the bottom of the body tube had failed and the fin was bent up on the dowel. A fairly simple fix by 2031, which is when I'll likely fly it again.
The original plan for the day was for me to lead off with one of the new, unflown rockets in the tote, but I rarely remember things like that in the moment. The Semroc ThunderBird would likely have been the leadoff flight if I'd stuck with that plan.
No matter. This would be a B6-4 flight and yes, I fluffed the chute before the flight. No parawads on this flight. The B6-4 got it off the pad quickly, so much so that the ignition/liftoff pic was all I could manage. The almost perfectly straight flight topped out at 289' and appeared to be at the end of its rope at that point. As I said, no parawad here. The chute popped immediately and brought it back to the field for a left field landing.
Flight #3 would be another first timer, the Semroc Mark II. I picked this one up in an auction with a Little Ivan some years back. I had missed the Ivan when it was available, and I had flown my original Mark II pretty much to death at B6-4 Field. (Okay, that might be a bit of a fib. It's still flying.) At any rate, the Mark II Two was built right after the Lil' Ivan in 2021, but it hung around the shop in primer until I recently got tired of seeing it on my list of rockets that need a flight. I'm big on simple, so the paint scheme I chose reflected that.
This would be a B6-4 flight. Yeah, I said it. I'm not exactly sure why I loaded it with a B6-4 instead of an A8-3, but if there was a day when this combination would work out, today was it. At least that was my thought. And I was right. It left the pad quickly and leaned slightly right toward Rt. 8, topping out at 738'. To be honest, I lost it at first as it was pretty much out of sight, but eventually I caught sight of the parachute. (Same one as the OTL but fluffed.) As it descended the breeze was pushing it toward the treeline across the parking lot, but the angles told me that was not going to be an issue. Instead, it landed hard on the parking lot. I was expecting a broken fin, but aside from a couple of scuffs, all was good.
Flight #4 was another first flight bird, the hodgepodge I called Bubblehead. Bubblehead started out life as a Semroc Lil' Hercules that blew its guts on a first flight a few years back. No trace was ever found of the nose cone and shock cords and the body sat around the shop until I paired it up with a homemade nose cone. (Not homemade by me, mind you.) The cone had come in a late night eBay buy of vintage nose cones, a lot of which seem to be hand turned. This one wasn't turned, but carved in the shape of a Christmas light. It reminded me of my attempt at carving a nose cone back in 1977 for a sturdy body tube I garbage picked. I bought a bag of balsa scraps at Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby at a clearance sale and carved what I thought was a pretty cool cockpit cone. No one told me otherwise, so I assumed I was right in my cool assessment. History tells me otherwise, but since there are no photos of the cone, cool it stays in my memory.
Bubblehead doesn't look like much, but when you think of it as an 18mm-powered Mosquito, you begin to realize that it will likely be a tough one to track. When I flew the Lil' Hercules, I was shocked to find that it virtually disappeared when I pressed the button. I got lucky and found it on the country club tennis courts, which were a long way off. It was thought that Bubblehead would be tough to load on the pad because of how the cone flared out, but aside from a slight rub, it wasn't an issue. This was a dead straight flight, testament to the lack of winds on the field for most of the day. Bub topped out at 663' and recovered just to my left in deep left field.
Next on the pad would be another first-time flyer, the Estes D.O.M. Cloud Buster. This bird is the soul of 3fnc rocketry, and fairly nondescript all around. The thing that drew me to it was that I found a section of BT-30 and a nose cone in the shop. When I went looking through the plans, I found that the Cloud Buster used the cone and a section of body tube the same length as the one I had. Does it get any easier than that?
This would be another A8-3 flight in a minimum diameter bird, but I was out of 1/2A6-2s. Still, with the largely calm conditions I wasn't anticipating a tough track. The Cloud Buster didn't disappoint, busting clouds to an altitude of 526'. (Okay, so it was a mostly clear day. That doesn't mean those clouds didn't get the message.) The flight had leaned to the right as it left the pad, quickly reached altitude and popped the streamer as it was still ascending. It crossed back over the parking lot and appeared to be about to recover in the woods, but a fortuitous breeze stopped its southward drift. I walked over to gather things up and when I went to untangle the shock cord, the burnt Kevlar crumbled in my hands. It had been tied around the engine block and apparently the exhaust blast had been too much for it. I've never had this happen before. I've had it break or pull out of the glue, but never burn.
Flight #6 would be the most interesting flight in the world. Okay, that might be pushing things a bit, but it would definitely be the most interesting flight of the day. My long-suffering Estes Fat Boy hadn't flown since the NARAM in 2013. I have no idea why. Today it was loaded with a C5-3, a combination that I had success with several weeks back with my Mega Star Snoop.
I miss the days when you could just pop over to Johnny's Toys and buy a Fat Boy whenever the upscale goony urge hit you. This one was a straggler from those days and had spent the weekend in the trees once at B6-4 Field, causing the worst case of poison ivy of my adult life when I fought to retrieve it. Today I was anticipating a typical flight, the C5-3 being a great pairing with this size rocket. There was movement at first, with the rocket lifting as much as 10" off the pad. Then there was a big supplosion.
In the aftermath I wound up with the body of the rocket still on the pad, still largely full of dog barf despite what blew out when it exploded. There was a fireball that went high in the sky off to the left. The engine casing cleared the engine hook after ripping through most of the motor tube. There was almost two inches of play in the motor hook. The blast deflector deflected the blast nicely, but paid a heavy price for it. It was almost bent in half. The casing was never found. The parachute fell to the ground after the plastic attachment on the cone was broken off, shroud lines mostly burnt away. In fact, I had to step on them to stop them from smoldering.
It was "The most interesting flight of the day." Ironically, I had forgotten my drink, so I stayed thirsty.
Next was the most anti-climactic flight of the day, through no fault of its own, the Aggressor Aerospace DF-15B. This was a nicely done scale bird that I built back in 2013. It was a great build, reminding me of sitting in the basement constructing the Estes kits of old. This would fly on a B6-4, which I thought would be a conservative load for the best possible flight without overdoing it.
Not quite sure what the issue was here, but there were definite issues. The B6-4 didn't seem to have anywhere near the umph necessary to get the DF-15B moving. It lethargically left the pad and almost immediately began to tip toward the right. Reminded me of the C6-3 flight of my Estes SDI Satellite on a C6-3 a few years back, but that bird was fat. The turn continued for the DF-15B and eventually it entered the coast phase heading down. From this point it was a matter of hoping for a chute before impact, but that hope was in vain. I was also hoping that it wouldn't hit Rt. 8 and that hope worked for the most part. The DF-15B hit hard enough to bury the nose cone and break off a fin, but there was no damage to the body tube and dog barf all over the impact site. The damage appeared to be the fin and a series of deep scratches in the nose cone. It should fly again in 2031.
Next flight would be an experiment of sorts. The Inflight WASP is actually a 24mm rocket, but I built an adapter to see if it could be flown on smaller fields. It's a decent size bird, but seems like a B6-4 candidate based on the other BT-55 flights I've made here in The Grove.
No other way to say it, this was a beautiful flight. The WASP took off leaning slightly to the left and behind me, heading for the sun and topping out at 309'. Ejection occurred just as it tipped over and the chute filled like I knew what I was doing. It came back toward me, landing in straightaway left field 30' from me.
On the back side of halfway, flight #9 would be the Excelsior Goonybird Zero, one of Phred's creations from his initial bout of Goony Fever. I was sent the decal sets for this and the Der Goony Max to build for review at EMRR. I treed the Goonybird Zero on the third flight, which was the standard for a review back then. Phred was nice enough to send me another decal set, which is the one I'm still flying 21 years later.
The flight was as I've come to expect out of the Baby Bertha variant Goons. It left the pad leaning to the left and flew directly into the sun, as shown by my makeshift eye shade. Unfortunately, I didn't learn my fluffing lesson as I allowed the GZ to fly with a chute that had been wrapped up in the body tube since March of 2021. That's on me. The GZ topped out at 291' and recovered laid out flat in left field without damage. Long live the Goons.
The next bird on the pad is one that I have a complicated personal history with, the Quest Totally Tubular. Not sure why, but over the years this rocket has alternated a perfectly stable flight with a skywriting exhibition that would do Waldo Pepper proud. The last flight was on a B6-4, which was the skywriter. This may have something to do with the added weight and the finicky tube fins.
This would be an A8-3 flight, which may well be the key here. It was a perfect straight and stable flight to the right that topped out at 268'. Ejection occurred as it was still moving upward and it recovered just to my left in deep left field on a wadded up Mylar streamer. That's okay, the streamer was free.
As is the apparent custom for the day, I would follow an excellent flight that reaffirmed my faith in a particular model with a feh flight that screamed "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER". The USS Atlantis is one of my favorite Estes kits of all time, but until I picked up this PD Rocketry verion, I'd never owned a 1:1 kit. I used available parts to build a BT-20 downscale in 2001 that I flew quite a bit before it succumbed to injuries sustained when it was squashed flat on US 27, but never the original.
Apparently this is not the first time the Atlantis flew a low level flight on an A8-3. The first flight back in 2013 shows only 150' as a max altitude. This one beat that, topping out at 168', but never looked comfortable doing it. The flight left the pad heading to my right and was a large arc of a flight path. It seemed to be pointing at the ground forever when the ejection charge finally fired at about the 30' point. The chute filled immediately and brought the rocket safely to the ground. Pretty sure the next flight will be on a B6-4.
I picked the Estes Solo up on clearance stupid cheap several years back. I flew it at a WSR launch in Dayton but was far from impressed with the performance. As I was prepping for this launch, I found a stray C6-3 at the bottom of one of my totes. When I looked to the left, the Solo was sticking out of a tote. It's the only reason it made the trip on this day.
The previous flight had been wildly uninspiring. Altitude was okay on the C6-3, but the glider began nose-diving and never recovered, crashing hard into the field. The booster recovered fine, but nothing about the flight had me thinking that I'd do more than repurpose the parts someday. This C6-3 flight was completely different than the first one. Altitude was again impressive, topping out at 473'. The glider disengaged and began a quick float across the field toward the parking lot/woods. It seemed to take forever to go from second base where ejection occurred to the parking lot. Just when it looked like the glider would be lost, it began a gentle turn back toward the pad. This turned into a large loop and it still wasn't dropping fast enough to take the woods out of the equation. In the end it didn't reach the woods, but almost zeroed Sir Thomas, hitting the recycling container just to the right of the House of Blue Goo. The Solo might be an RTF kiddie toy, but I admit that I was entertained on this flight.
I was nowhere close to the bottom of the box, but I was starting to feel the heat in a big way. I intended to make the Semroc Hydra One my last flight of the day. This bird has been in the paint booth for several years and only recently got the sanding sealer sanded off. The flight would be on a B6-4.
The Hydra One flight was dead straight off the pad. It appeared to eject as forward motion was slowing and began a swinging descent back toward the pad. It landed around 20 feet in front of me, giving me a nervous moment when it looked like it might land on my car. Now I have to contend with masking, a job I'm not looking forward to.
At this point I got a second wind and decided that I could stand one more flight before retreating home to the air conditioning and mowing job I was not looking forward to. I chose the Estes Astron Gyroc that I'd recently repaired with new elastic and tape. This would be an A8-3 flight and I anticipated no trouble, just like the previous Gyroc flight.
This Gyroc had previously been all yellow, but since the flap was broken off and needed to be reattached anyway, I decided to mask it off and paint it black in the interest of visibility. Made sense in my head, but in reality, I find myself seeing the movement of the recovering rocket, not the color at all. Moot point. Anyway, this was an A8-3 flight and flew like the other two Gyroc flights I've ever made, a nice, straight boost, then a fluttering recovery, all easily followed. The flight was fairly straight off the pad and everything looked normal as it fluttered back toward the field in deepest center. When I got to the landing site in center field, I found that the yellow flap had delaminated during the flight and broken away from the body. I walked the outfield from center to right fields, then from the road to the infield, searching for an obvious flash of yellow. Never saw anything, so I'll be cutting a new flap post flight, but I might walk the field again if I can get down there before the next cutting.
This would have been the perfect place to stop for the day. I had sweated through my shirt and was rapidly sweating into my shorts, I'd flown about half of the rockets I'd bought and had forgotten to pack a drink, so the smart money would have stuck the pad and packed the car. I likely would have, but I realized that I still had a newbie that had never been flown, the Semroc ThunderHawk.
What's one more flight, right? What could go wrong on an A8-3 with a tiny chute, right? While it's true that I'd be on the road home to my air conditioned living room in a few minutes, it is also true that I'd be making the trip home one rocket lighter. The ThunderHawk flight was perfectly normal right up to the point where it floated deep into the woods on the tiny parachute. The flight was like a lot of them on the day, dead straight off the pad, climbed to 281' and popped the chute. The chute was the same one that had failed on the first flight of the day, but it popped immediately in this case. The breeze blew it quickly to the left, a bit too quickly for the eye test. It was dropping slightly, but moving laterally at a faster rate. It wasn't yet over the treeline, but from where I stood there was no chance of it dropping enough to save it unless the breeze died. It didn't. The ThunderHawk sailed into the treeline about 20 feet deep. I've now made two ThunderHawk flight with two different ThunderHawks. I doubt that I'll build a third.
All told, it was a decent day. 15 flights, one great CATO that I thankfully captured on camera and assorted bumps and bruises. I didn't plan it, but at the end of the day my flight count stood at 2499. I knew I was close, but it didn't occur to me that I was knocking on the door. This raises the question of what to fly for flight 2500. I have the Estes Beta all ready for decals, so that is a possibility. I also have one of the DRM brigade ready to go, so that is another possible. The Satellite Interceptor appears on my "need to fly" list. At this point I'm just spitballing. I'm currently hobbled by a pickleball injury, so I'm not sure when my next chance to launch will come. I was kind of hoping it would be today. When it comes, I'm sure you'll hear about it.
