I got to the field early, (for me) and found setup well under way. (I think my sole contribution to the setup was sticking one of the barrier poles in place that designates the flightline. Worked up a sweat there.) With the exhausting setup finished, I had little else to do but pick my first victim. (My wife had gone out to a church block party with friends, so I was able to prep all Friday night.) I'd concentrated on rockets I'd never flown or hadn't since I was shy of 50, and as such had a fairly eclectic group picked out. First on the pad would be the Dr. Zooch Mercury Little Joe, my first ever Zooch kit. The Little Joe project had been largely scuttled by several abortive attempts to build the cussed escape tower. (I'm sure there will be more.) Despite my ham-handedness, it's a great looking bird, as are all the Zooch birds, even mine.
Stopped to visit some crop circles on the recovery path. I'm not saying it was aliens, but......
The second flight for the day would be the recently finished New Way Der SquaRed Max, in primer, but flyable. As luck would have it, it was put on the pads next to another, fully fleshed out version. Mine had snazzy homemade decals for this flight only.
Interesting kit, and I really like the way they went about turning a square rocket into a three finned bird. The C6-5 flight was almost a carbon copy of the Mercury Little Joe before it, impressive altitude, then a long drift across the field to the exact same spot as the Little Joe. Again, I'm not saying it was aliens, but.....
By way of comparison, flight #3 would be my own Der Square Max, a four finned mess that I put together using a Quad Goblin as a parts donor. People occasionally ask why I don't design kits. Here's your answer.
The Quad Goblin is a 24mm powered bird, and I felt no need to change that. D12-5 flight of expected altitude and drift. Did I mention that the bulk of my flights on the day were handled by the same Semroc chute, appropriately reefed? Such was the case with the first three birds. It was my first trip over the fence to the unhappy land of soccer. Far from my last.
My old Quest Apollo was my fourth flight. Dusty and dirty, indifferently built and without the decals (which were dried up when I opened the package,) the Apollo hadn't flown since 2015, but turned up during one of my "what haven't I flown recently?' basement searches.
Big field, so the Apollo got a C6-5. No pics of the flight, aliens again, but the flight was everything you'd expect, arcing high back over the flightline, then drifting back across the field and landing on the soccer fields. Everything looked perfectly normal, but when I arrived at the landing site, the upper body tube and nose cone were missing. I walked the field, and kept an eye peeled for any flash of white the rest of the day, but it never turned up. Eventually I'll make another Quest order and get the replacements.
The original Estes Hornet is a little known rocket, I believe one of the original kits in the Mini Brute line. I built one because it never shows up at the pads and because I liked the Mini Brute bugs. It doesn't take much.
This would be the first flight in nine years, although it had been loaded and made trips to different launches over the years, most recently at B6-4 Field and the WSR cornfield. The A3-4T flight was fairly high and arrow straight, not reacting to the breeze at all. Recovery was nose blow and occurred in the area between the pads and the spectators. It got me thinking that I need to bring the Estes Javelin and Super Flea to a launch in the near future.
In 1977 I got an Aeronautical Lab set for Christmas from Radio Shack. The fact that it had a rocket included, actually two, was the main draw for me, and while I built the rubber band powered rocket, I never got around to building the solid rocket motor one. Much of the set didn't survive the move the next year, but several years after I started back in the hobby, I found the remnants in Mom and Dad's basement. A quick flip through the book convinced me to see if eBay could help close provide closure, and it did. Twice.
In 1977, I had been a kid raised on Estes instructions, so the lack of guidance in the book was somewhat intimidating. I was also flying alone at the time, and not having anyone to bounce ideas off of took a lot of my enthusiasm for the project. It never got built, but in 2012 I was determined to right that long simmering wrong. Nine years later I finally got it painted and decaled. This would be the first flight in full livery, and despite the large field, I opted for a B6-6 to keep it somewhat in sight. The flight was high and straight, the straightest of the day according to my notes, and recovery took place on the soccer fields on the reefed Semroc chute.
Seventh in the batting order on the day would be a Semroc Hawk that I bought from Carl when it first came out. Circumstances kept it from flying in the years since, but it had been taken along to a lot of launches in those years. Today I was determined to see it fly. A8-3 flight. M-80 ejection.
Things started off great. I was concentrating on getting a launch shot, so I missed the bulk of the flight, but I could tell by the reaction of the crowd and the sound of the ejection charge that the flight had been memorable. When I looked up I could see two pieces floating to earth, finally landing on the soccer field. When I walked out to retrieve the parts, I realized that all I was recovering was the wind and tail section. Luckily one of our spectators had seen the motor tube and spar fly off in the other direction where it had landed 100 yards away from the landing site of the wing and tail.
Flight #8 was the Estes Vampire that I cloned out of an Estes Jinx kit a few years back. To date it had only flown at B6-4 Field on 1/2A motors, so I was really looking forward to seeing what it could do on an A3-4T.
An amusing thing about this flight was the comment of the LCO when he announced the flight. "If you've ever seen one of these before, you're old." I'd previously only seen one in a catalog, and I've never seen the Banshee. The flight was perfectly straight, same as the Logix Explorer, but the Vampire broke a fin on landing. Some plastic cement should fix it.
Flight #9 would be the FRW Wizard Mini, a BT-5 downscale. This was another one that had travelled to multiple fields, ready to fly, but never seemed to get picked.
This flight would be a 1/2A3-4T, also dead straight, but with a recovery out to the left of the pads. While recovering it, we also located a Star Dart that was missing from a previous flight.
Flight #10 would be the one I was most nervous about, but with the last flight attempt being in 2003, I felt it was time to try the Centuri Mach 10 again. This was an eBay purchase back in 2003, and one that I was really fired up about. By this time I'd cloned several Mach 10s with horrible to great results, but having the chance to see what an original flew like was not something I was going to pass on. Plus, the price was right. The flights in 2003 had been marked by comments about how great the boost was, but how hopeless the glide portion of the flight looked.
It had been a long time since I tried flying a Mach 10, and a long time since I'd seen an acceptable motor, but while I was prepping I found that another of my Mach 10 squadron still had an unused B6-2 installed. Since I wanted to try the Centuri Mach 10, I pulled the motor and taped it in place. (The motor hook was broken off when I got it.) I slid the glider onto the rod and angled the rod to give it more of an angled liftoff. The boost was as impressive as I had written in 2003. very straight and with more than adequate altitude. The weighted marker cone was ejected and the glider began trying to glide. And trying. And trying. It never quite glided, but also never quite broke into a death dive. It looked to just need a little more nose weight, so I'll be on the lookout for B4-2 or B6-2 motors so I can try it again.
Eleventh flight of the day was another vintage long timer, the Estes Star Blazer. This was another eBay purchase, and I have no good reason for not flying it since 2003. It just never happened. Well, now it has.
18 years between flights? If that happens again I'll be almost 77 for the next flight. Not sure I like the odds of that. Whatever the case, the Star Blazer flew on a 1/2A3-4T, even if the flight card said A10-3T. Apparently there was a flight planned at B6-4 Field in the not too distant past. This bird managed five flights in 2002, but the fleet was smaller back then and it was easier to get noticed. This flight was to about 250' and ended with a near ringer on the launch pad. Nicely stable and you could hear the rust rain down as it shook 18 years worth off.
The next rocket was the most recently flown on the day. The Semroc ThunderChief last flew in October of 2020, a vacation day launch at B6-4 Field in absolutely perfect conditions. It was since repainted due to landing chips and a new decal was finally bought, so this would be the first flight in full livery.
The previous flight had been an A8-3 flight with a perfect recovery, a rare Thunder family flight without a broken fin. This one would be a C6-5 flight and I was anticipating a stroll to the soccer fields. The Chief did not disappoint. Flight was high with a pronounced lean to the right, but very little arcing back toward the flightline. Yep. Soccer field recovery, but the good news was that it completely missed the gravel.
As I was hooking up the next flight, the Holverson Tangent, Randy Boadway was the LCO and was reading the card, and asked if it was legal to fly it on our field. He thought it was the cheesy foam Tangent and didn't realize that there had been an actual balsa and paper rocket that the cheesy foam rocket was based on. I asked if cheesy foam was banned and he said no, but that he'd never seen one fly. I told him that he would the next time we flew as I had a Tangent, Wicked Winnie and Swinger that I'd be sure to pack along.
But first, there was drama. I went to take the glamour shot and my phone suddenly started spazzing. (That's the technical term.) The screen went white and the pics came out that way as well. Randy was giving a tutorial on the workings of the new launch system, so I went to the car and got my backup camera for this pic, but I forgot that I took it when I got home and started working on the pics. When I realized that I had no pics of the Tangent, I drew one.
I know! An amazing likeness. If not for the fact that I transposed the fin colors, you'd think this was a launch pic. Uncanny.
The Tangent flew on a C6-5 and performed as expected. A fairly straight boost with just the slightest bend back toward the flightline, then a long drift back away from us to the soccer fields where it landed on the gravel and chunked a fin.
Speaking of long suffering rocket that was loaded and kept getting dragged to launches only to remain in the rocket tote, the next flight would be the InFlight version of the Nike-X on a C6-5.
The Nike-X is one of those rockets that just never seems to go away. I picked this up from InFlight, and after they went away, Estes rereleased their version of it. And for good reason. It's a cool semi-scale kit that looks and flies great without major complications. Previously only a B6-4 Field bird on a B6-4 diet, I wanted to see what it flew like on a C6-5, and the answer is like a boss. Fairly straight and high, with a recovery to the left of the pads, near the fence, but not in soccer land.
At this point, I was done. My legs were singing off-key renditions of Quiet Riot tunes and I found myself fantasizing about Advil, but when I got back to the car, I saw that I still had a bullet in the bandolier. The Estes Space Corps Lunar Scout was an impulse buys on one of those days where I stopped by Hobby Lobby with a specific purchase in mind, only to find that they didn't have what I needed. Instead I bought the Lunar Scout, thinking that it would be a great addition to the B6-4 Field Low & Slow Brigade. It actually made it to the pad during my June launch, but technical issues and biting flies called a premature end to that flight session.
The nice thing about small field flyers like this is that they fly on the same motor, either an A10 or A3, no matter if they're flying out of a backyard, a park or a cornfield. This would be an A3-4T flight and it performed as expected, a quick flight to 250', then recovery 100' away, a perfect backyard flyer.
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