Wright Stuff Rocketeers launch, Dayton, OH, 9-25-21

 I'd been able to make a rare appearance at the eRockets build session on the Tuesday prior to this launch, and had spent two hours working on a couple of the rockets I'd fly on this Saturday.  I was able to do my Friday prep, which meant that I had 20+ rocket that I'd brought along to fly.  I arrived a few minutes after 11, (I really need to make packing the car a part of my Friday prep,) and was surprised to find only four of us had shown up to fly on this beautiful Saturday.

My first flight was an oldie, an Astron Sprite I'd picked up via eBay several years back.  I'd flown it once before, but realized then that it was likely quite a bit older than I'd thought as it had been set up to use the old Estes "shorty" motors.  Luckily for me, a piece had fallen off of the A8-3 I'd planned to use. 

Wow, to say it just disappeared wouldn't be doing justice to the way it just disappeared.  As far as we could tell, it was a dead straight flight, but we just don't know.  What we do know was that someone other than myself caught a glimpse of it landing off to the left of the flightline.  The shorty motor had bypassed the motor hook and was nowhere to be found, so it's difficult to say if it tumbled or came down like the little bullet it is.

One of the rockets I'd worked on at the build session on Tuesday was the Estes MX Missile.  It had started out as just a nose cone, but I cut an 11" BT-60 body tube out of shop scraps and gathered some of the internals to take with me on Tuesday night.  I bought an Estes Freefall to serve as the donor for the fin assembly and had construction largely completed by the time the build session ended.  I was on vacation the rest of the week and spent one day painting and generally catching up on projects.  I had printed off a set of MX Missile decals from the JimZ site, but wasn't happy with how I applied them, so I'll be trying again at a later date.

The C6-5 flight took off to the left, which I was completely unprepared for.  (The previous launch everything had gone to the right.  Don't ask.)  Altitude was to around 800' and likely was affected by the fairly extreme windcocking.  Ejection came as it was sideways, unsurprisingly.  It then began a fast run away from the flightline toward the soccer fields, but not near any of the games that were in progress.  All parts were present and accounted for and I declared the project a success.  All in all, a great use of the Estes Freefall kit.  Since the same fin can is used for the Gemini Titan and since I have a nose cone ready to go, I'll no doubt be buying another Freefall kit in the near future.

Flight #3 would be the big disappointment on the day for me.  It was an MPC Pioneer-1 that I'd collected the parts for and finished the previous day.  Nothing wildly exciting, but I'm always up for flying a vintage MPC kit, so the Pioneer-1 was one of two kits I'd brought along for the day.  Mike has just finished making a rude gesture that was unfortunately not caught.

I chose a B6-6 for the flight and a streamer for recovery, the Pioneer-1 not being a large rocket.  It was more than enough power.  WAY more than enough.  The Pioneer-1 flew back over the flightline and was all but out of sight when the ejection charge fired.  Everything worked as expected.  The streamer looked to be slowing things down, and then suddenly, it wasn't.  The P-1 began falling rapidly, following the plastic fin unit back toward the flightline.  100' from the ground it stopped following the fins and dropped like a rock, right into the bed of Prez Dave's truck.

There was shrapnel.

Just that quickly, my labor of MPC love was gone.  One fin snapped off.  The other one shattered.  Hence the shrapnel.  Checked my MPC parts stash when I got home.  Nada.  Not a problem, I thought.  I'll just order a new fin can from Quest.  After all, isn't that where I got this one?  Apparently not.  This is going to be tougher to replace than I thought.

Since my plan was to fly every monkey in my circus, I had grabbed several of the BT-5 rockets I'd cloned simply because I had a decal for them, one of them being an Estes Pulsar.  I've always thought that skill level 1 rockets like these were the kind of rockets you'd likely only be interested in if they were a part of your fleet in your early days.  Such was not the case for me as the Pulsar was available in the mid to late 80's when my interest in rocketry was limited to a trip through the rocketry section of Johnny's, our local supplier.

The flight was an oddity on the day.  The 1/2A3-4T flight was almost straight up to about 450'.  At ejection the motor kicked out, but the charge had more than enough wang-dang-doodle to crank out the laundry, assuming that you wash and wear your streamers.  Recovery was quite a bit different than the flight as the breeze took the Pulsar out almost to the soccer fields.  

The next rocket came about for an entirely different reason.  For the Estes Foxfire I had acquired the unique cockpit nose cone in an eBay lot of nose cones.  I already had a Space Racer kit to build, so it was a choice between the Foxfire and the Corsair.  In the end the choice came down to which one I thought I could reproduce the decals for.  That trick never works.

Thought I had it, I really did.  The Foxfire decal looked fairly straightforward, so I loaded a piece of decal paper in my printer and fired a copy off.  Never did figure out what the issue was, but the decal came out larger than the piece of paper.  I basically got a quarter of the actual image on a full sheet of decal paper.  I figured that an upscale of that size would require a Q motor, so I threw the sheet away and kind of tossed the Foxfire aside for a few years.  I eventually tried again on my go-to Epson printer and got things close enough for my non-discerning eye.  I still need to paint the cockpit, but that will likely be a project for future build and paint frenzies.

This would be the first B6 flight after a couple of A8 flights at B6-4 Field.  (Did you follow that?)  The B6-6 flight arced back over the flightline and to the left, topping out around 750' well above the trees.  The trees were never a threat as it streamed back our way after ejection and recovered deep on the soccer fields.

The next flight would be another of my guess-your-best catalog birds, my take on a Kopter Rotor Recovery Dart.  I'd actually started this project pre-pandemic, but when collecting the parts from the stash I found that the transition that I thought was BT-55 to BT-50 was actually something entirely different.  Not sure where it came from or what project it was meant for, but nothing I had in my nose cone collection fit the body tube that fit the transition.  I took the project to a build session at eRockets the previous Tuesday and Randy figured out that the tube was actually an ST-8 and we were able to figure out a cone with the proper profile.

Over the years I've made some poor flight decisions.  Flying a cornstalk colored rocket in a field full of recently harvested cornstalks was a bad idea.  Firing a primer white rocket into a sky full of fluffy white clouds turned out to be a close second.  The D12-5 flight followed the flight path of the Foxfire, an arc back over the flightline and to the left.  That's when things changed.  None of us saw anything, no puff of smoke at ejection, no orange chute dotting the sky and racing back across the field, nothing.  I wanted to start my recovery walk, but I had no idea where to start walking.  I was considering hopping in the car and driving through the soccer complex when Prez Dave came walking in from his own recovery jaunt with an extra rocket.  His chad staged MPC Part II Lunar Shuttle had taken the royal tour of the complex, landing in the far southeast corner of the soccer complex, and while he was walking back, my fluffy white Kopter Dart landed silently in his path.  Winner.

Since I'd flown a D12 and gotten it back, I decided to ups the ante and try an E12, and the victim would be the Estes Super Nova Payloader.  A HUGE Estes ARTF bird that I bought as a Christmas gift for my son back when he still accompanied me to launches.  Based on his reaction, you'd think I'd gifted him socks.  Never gave it a second look, and it was quite dusty when I finally dragged it out to build it.

This poor bird has a tendency to break fins each time it flies.  Then I have a tendency to misplace the fins before I can fix it, and as a result, it only flies when I find the fins and reattach them.  Well, it's that point in the cycle.  This time their was a new novelty.  The E12-6 flight followed the same path as the Dart and looked to top out around the same altitude.  Then things got interesting.  It didn't disappear like the Dart had.  Instead it looked to be recovering nicely, except for that piece that was rapidly falling toward the left side of the flightline.  Turns out the ejection charge had blown off the nose cone and payload section, despite my attempts to keep this from happening.  It hit just off the caution tape line while the rest of the rocket carried on in the same supposed direction that the Dart had.  This time without the cloaking device engaged.  And for the sake of tradition it broke a fin.

Tired of walking, I pulled out another of my BT-5 birds, the Estes Vector.  Same story, a skill level 1 bird that I had the decal for.  Two, actually, if anyone finds they have a need for one.

This would be flight #2 for the Vector, the first being in 2015 in the infancy of my blogging.  That was a 1/4A flight at B6-4 Field and was notable in that both the body and nose cone core sampled on the infield.

Six year later came flight #2, this one powered up on a 1/2A3-4T.  The flight was a lot higher than expected.  I had it listed as 500', which seems like a bit optimistic, but it was certainly higher than the 150' I estimated on the 1/4A.  As most of the flights did at this point of the day, the Vector flight path took it back over the flightline and the trees behind it, but more to the right of the pads.  No one saw it land, but the general area was inside one of the baseball fields, where it was found on the infield, having failed to stick the landing in any way.  It also failed to eject the streamer.

When I was packing up for the launch that morning, the Estes Rogue Voyager caught my eye.  When I'd built it several years earlier I wasn't entirely happy with how it turned out, but once I got it painted and decaled, my opinion of it changed.  I've since come to appreciate it as one of John Boren's best designs, my personal second favorite behind the JBR-013.

The Rogue Voyager flight would be on a C6-5, pretty much the standard load on a field of this size.  Another oddity on the day, the flight was dead straight to about 800', tipping over just as it ejected, then riding the breeze back into the soccer fields.  Might have been a good idea to reef the chute, but I think this one was going to be a hike no matter what.

Every company has a fire-and-forget mini engine bird.  Estes has several, the Streak, Mosquito, Quark and 220 Swift.  Centuri had the Two Bitz.  Custom contributed the Sunracer.  I've managed to fly and recover the bulk of the f&f kits in my collection, with the 220 Swift being the only one to continuously confound me by disappearing.  Twice.  This would be the third flight of the Sunracer, and the first since a hard hit on the B6-4 Field infield caused a rekitting in 2015.  It's spent the last six years as a desk ornament, but I couldn't leave well enough alone.

The Rocket red paint is the only hope this one has.  It's quick off the pad and the flight is often over before the I look away from the viewfinder.  Both previous flights were on 1/4As, but in the spirit of the day, I decided to go with the big 1/2A3-4T on the big field.  True to form, once I looked up from getting the launch video I had little chance of finding the rocket in the air.  In fact, none.  Mike Rohde saw the flash of Rocket Red in the outfield of another baseball field, this one behind us and to the left.  That's all I have to say about that.  Well, except that it was recovered for a record breaking third time.

BAR-dom was a relatively new thing when I got back into the hobby in 2001.  As a result, there were quite a few OOP rockets hanging on the pegs at places I shopped.  I picked up the next rocket at the Milford Johnny's, then couldn't figure out why I bought it.  I'm guessing it was for the unique nose cone, but it may have just been because I realized it was an old kit.  (Smart me would have gone around and cherry-picked the pegs for kits like this to fund my retirement, but I've never met smart me.)  Years went by before I decided to build it, and when I did, I couldn't bring myself to paint it in the colors on the face card.  By a stroke of luck, it was built during my fascination with Midnight Black Metallic spray paint.

For some reason, I had no B6-4s for this flight, but I found myself loaded with B6-6s.  This B6-6 flight flew back over the flightline, ejected over the trees and recovered deep in the field, almost making the soccer fields.  The fiber fins have made three flights and are holding up better than I thought they would.

The time to go home was drawing near, so I decided to go big with the next flight.  The PDR A-20 Demon had been flight ready for most of the 2021 flying season, but for some reason it kept getting left loaded for the next time.  Since it had last flown in 2011, I was more than ready to get it off my "need to fly" list.  The last flight at NARAM 53 resulted in the motor mount blowing out at ejection, so I replaced it with an E-capable mount.  This would be the first E12 flight.

The flight was impressive, an arc back over the flightline and way over the treeline to around 1000'.  At ejection it was immediately obvious that I was going to be seeing a lot of the football and soccer fields.  Drift was fairly prodigious and I wound up seeing parts of the soccer fields that I'd never known existed.  As it turned out, I wasn't done seeing new parts of the soccer complex.

The Estes Defender was next, and like the A-20 Demon, it had spent time on the traveling team for much of 2021, but circumstances had kept it from flying.  Not sure why, but the one and only flight previously had come in 2006 with QUARK at VOA.  In the years since I bought a set of decals from Excelsior, but never seemed to think about it when flight time came around.

The D12-5 flight was a near copy of the A-20 Demon, arcing back over the flightline, easily clearing the trees and topping out around 1000'.  At ejection is when things got different.  We were able to track the Defender as it passed over us, but it disappeared for all three of us around the same time.  In situations like this, I normally start scanning the horizon, hoping to catch a glimpse of it before it lands.  I had nothing, and was just about to give up and take a drive when Lee Berry saw it just before touchdown.  He was able to give me a point of reference and after a long walk, I was able to spot it off in the distance.  It was quite a bit further than the A-20 Demon had drifted, possibly in the adjoining county.

My last flight of the day would be a rocket I finished at the build session at eRockets the previous Tuesday, the Estes D.O.M. Orbital Transport Laboratory.  This would be my second version of this Estes plan, the first having bounced off of a car on US 27 during one of my socially distant launches back in the spring of 2020.  After it hit the car, the car ran over it, so there was definitely a grudge.  I was able to salvage the nose cone, parachute, motor hook and launch lug, but it took a long time to get reinterested in the project.

The flight would be on a C6-5, so I was obviously figuring on making another soccer trip.  Never happened.  The flight was plenty high, topping out around 750' after a trip back over the flightline.  It never made the soccer fields, but got as close as possible without actually hitting the pitch, snugging up against the hurricane fencing that separates the two fields.

I consider fourteen flight a pretty successful day, but as usual, I left a lot of bullets still in the magazine.  As I finish this entry, it's already past mid-October and I have eleven days to get a launch day in to keep me on track for a launch per month.  The next WSR launch is scheduled for the 30th, but Saturday is looking like the only day in the next four that rain isn't expected, so I'll be eyeing B6-4 for clear spots just to hedge my bets. 

9-11 launch, Dayton, Ohio

Because of social obligations, I didn't get to do my normal Friday night prep session, so I headed for the WSR launch in Dayton with 20+ rockets, few of which had received any pre-launch attention.  I was running late as usual, having stopped for both breakfast and motors on the way.  There was a decent crowd when I arrived, with a dozen or so flights already in the air and a surprisingly strong breeze out of the southwest.  Our wind speed indicator showed a steady 6 to 8 knot breeze, with occasional gusts above 10.  The forecast was for increasing windspeed to 15 knots.  Brisk.

It had been almost a month since our last launch, and I had finished several projects in that time that I was anxious to put in the air, along with my continuing quest to fly my backlog of kits that had been gathering dust, in some cases as far back as 2001.  First off the pad on this breezy Saturday would be a new build, the Estes Expedition.

I don't know if I got this from an Estes clearance or from Hobby Lobby.  Whatever the case, I should have bought a couple more.  Even slathered with Fill & Finish it performed far better than expected.  Winds were pretty stout all day, to the point that we were picking spots between gusts to launch.  That was the story with the Expedition.  It windcocked heavily to the right on the E12-6 and flew deep into the field toward the Rip Rap Roadhouse.

As you can see, I left my mad skillz with the camera at home.  Either that or the wind blew my aim off.  The flight topped out around 800' and the ejection charge fired when the rocket was horizontal and it immediately began racing back toward the flightline.  It passed us moving at a good clip and impacted hard, then bounced five feet in the air.  I anticipated the worst, but found all fins present and accounted for.  Can't say I'm looking forward to the sanding to come, but I really like this bird.

Second flight of the day would be a seldom flown eBay purchase, an Estes Bullpup 12D that hadn't seen the skies since 2013.  Not sure of the timeline on this kit, but I'd guess it was fairly old considering that it had water slide decals.

The flight would be a C6-5 and would follow that of the Expedition, windcocking heavily to the right as it left the pad and recovering while almost horizontal.  It topped out around 600' and quickly crossed back to the left and deep into the football field.  I noted that I could have lessened the recovery walk if I'd cut a spill hole in the parachute, but I didn't build the rocket.

 My third flight would be another long neglected bird, an upscale of the FSI Sprint.  The previous flight had been in 2013 and had resulted in a 1.5" zipper, and I hadn't gotten around to giving the body tube a haircut until recently.

Since the Expedition flight didn't overfly the field, this would be another E12-6 flight.  The large fins made this one flail around on the pad pre-flight, but somehow the clips kept their grip on the igniters.

I angled the pad into the breeze more on this one than I did the Expedition and got a very similar flight path to 800'.  The extra tilt showed up more in recovery, and the Sprint recovered a lot closer to the flightline than the Expedition, by a couple hundred yards actually.  It also looked good coming down under the 12' nylon chute, which likely helped with the close recovery.

Flight #4 would be another eBay rocket, an Estes ARCAS that had been saddled with a horrible custom set of fins when I received it.  I flew it as it looked when it showed up, but deep down I really wanted to give it a do-over.  

Estes ARCAS before

Estes ARCAS after

A couple of weeks back I was walking past the ARCAS in the basement hall and picked it up to see how well the fins were attached.  The answer was not all that well, and I had the offending set of fins off in a couple of minutes.  New fins were cut and fitted into place, then the body was resprayed gloss white and a decal printed off.  The end result is a lot more satisfying than the previous off the rails custom, and I don't think it will be another six years before it flies again.

Sticking with the scale theme, the next flight would be the Quest Harpoon.  Okay, pseudo-scale.  It would be a C6-5 flight as would everything else I flew from this point.

This was another that hadn't flown in years, six to be exact.  This would be the second flight, the first one coming at B6-4 Field on the requisite B6-4.  The breezes had become more insistent at this point, and the Harpoon was angled slightly into the wind.  As everything else had on the day, the flight windcocked right and climbed to 600'.  It was an oddity on the day in that recovery came to the right of the pads, and as I was recovering it I joined in a search for a missing case that was thought to have been ejected from a flight that lawn darted.  It was later found in the airframe of the crushed rocket.

No idea what happened next.  The "flight" would be an Estes Super Alpha on a C6-5, but despite a perfect ignition the Super Alpha didn't moved from the pad.

That said, the next actual flight would be the same Super Alpha on another C6-5.  I flew this rocket a lot in the year after it was introduced, but the last flight prior to this was at B6-4 Field on a B6-4, a great combination.

Nothing about the plastic nose cone or the generic looking decal did much for me, so I bought a Semroc cone and painted it like the Alpha that I got for my birthday in 1978.  Built that one on Friday, painted it on Saturday, and flew it into some woods at the back of the NKU campus on Sunday.

The flight was exactly like the the Harpoon before it, windcocking to the left and topping out around 600', but in this case, recovering far to our left on the football field.

My last flight on the day, although I didn't realize it at the time, would be the Estes Big Bertha that I'd bought unopened via eBay and painted in the 1977 paint scheme on the face card.

At this point you know how the flight turned out; windocked to the left in the ever stiffening breeze, then a rapid recovery back across the field to the left on the football field.  The wind was definitely becoming a decision maker for me, and I was about to find out just how much.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, my day was done.  I still had 10+ rockets prepped in the car, but nothing that I wanted to risk in the stiff breezes.  I realized this when I took what would be flight #9 to the pads.  It was a clone of the Coaster Space Probe 1 that I'd last flown in 2017.  While I was about to take the on-pad glamour shot, a particularly violent gust spun the rocket, causing a fin to whack a part of the pad.  Something about it didn't sound right, kind of like the sound a bat makes when it cracks.  Sure enough, the impact had broken one of the fins down near the bottom by the glue fillet.  I'm not a smart man, but I know when to put the lid on the box of chocolates and climb on the shrimp boat.  And the good news was that I already had ten rockets ready to go.