There wasn't supposed to be a break. After I made my 2000th flight in April of 2022 I fully intended to fly in the upcoming WSR launches. I had rockets prepped and packed to go, but a combination of rising gas prices and rising temperatures combined to make the idea of driving an hour to fly in a hot field less than palatable. As the summer wore on, the urge didn't return. Projects went untouched. The pool sounded like a great idea on a hot Saturday. My wife started asking if I was flying every weekend. I think she was sick of me. My daughter got married, a rarity for 2022 in that it didn't involve bad news, but still a load of stress. (Let's talk about my mail ordered tuxedo. No.) Then, to top 2022 off, my Mom passed away on Christmas night. Even with the current state of the world, 2023 had to be better. Right? Sigh.......
So, I made it almost two months into the new year before the urge struck. Even then I dallied through most of a perfect afternoon, making two trips to and from the field to retrieve forgotten details. (Dog barf? What happened to my dog barf? Where is my Altoids container full of igniter plugs? Is it bad if the launch rod is U shaped?) The geese obviously missed me. They left gifts all over the field. Got to see a road rage incident out on 27 while I was setting up.
Anyway, the first rocket I dusted off (literally) was the Estes Cosmic Explorer. Good choice. On an A8-3. Nice rocket. Bad engine choice.
The Cosmic Explorer left the pad. Barely. I could fart it that high. (Something to think about for my next launch.) Pretty sure it topped 100'. At any rate, it did what it was supposed to do as the ejection charge fired before it made it back to the ground and the chute popped. It was like a flight, only stomp rockets everywhere were laughing at me.
Redemption. That's what I was thinking as I chose the second rocket for the day, the Estes Payloader II. This time the A8-3 was a better choice. Perfect, in fact.
Winds were wildly inconsistent all day long, and for this flight they shifted and began blowing to the north. I did the prudent thing and angled the rod into the wind. The Payloader left the pad and crossed the field about as expected. The flight path was very straight to about the 303' mark, and the rocket was parallel to the ground when the ejection charge fired.
It quickly reversed course under chute and began heading for US 27. It landed, hard but safe, on the hill below my car. The nose cone was gone. Apparently the tight fit I'd observed when this last flew no longer applied due to the lack of air time over the past seven years. A quick scan of the area located it ten feet away. It must have dislodged during the hard landing.
The Semroc VF-261 hadn't seen the skies since a twilight flight here at B6-4 Field back in 2012. In the years since (wow, I was not even 50 then,) it had collected dust in the rocket room and lost one of the launch lug fin tips. It had been on the short list of many launches since then, but always seemed to get aced out by something that had been unflown even longer. Now it was one of the old boys, so I cut a new lug and put it back in flying shape.
I bought this from Carl immediately upon arriving at the Muncie NSL back in 2007. That night while surveying my nightmare motel room I decided to build it, prime it and finish it to fly it the next day. The vile bathroom served as my paint booth. (When I passed the motel on my last trip to Muncie in 2018, it had literally been stripped down to the girders, and I'm not sure that was far enough.) I got it primed, then painted it at the field the next day. I'm fairly sure this made it the first non-prototype VF-261 to be flown. I should probably sell it now on eBay.
This flight would be on an A8-3. Past flights have shown that this is perfect for this field. High enough to be impressive, low enough to guarantee recovery now that the trees are gone. The winds changed again for this flight, so the rod was adjusted straight up. This was a definite stovepipe flight, although it did head out toward US 27, so it might be better called a smokestack flight.
Recovery occurred straight out from the pad, a can o' corn at third for those of you who are baseball inclined. The rocket hit on one of the launch lug pieces and broke it off. Of course, it was not the one that had been previously replaced.
Not sure how the Estes Lucky Seven managed to not be picked as a B6-4 Field candidate during my socially distant Covid launches. It's a perfect rocket for the field, mini-engine powered and bulky enough to not overfly the field on an A3-4T or A10-3T. Yeah, it's kind of forgettable and mostly RTF, but sometimes that's what you need.
It last flew in 2015, and based on what I wrote about the flight, I can't imagine why I waited 8 years to fly it again. This flight would be on an A10-3T with the rod in the same position as the VF-261 launch. Not surprisingly, it followed the VF-261 flight path to a T. The flight was very straight and arced out slightly from the pad toward the road. I have flown it without a chute or streamer both times I've flown it. That may need to change in the future because it fell hard and fast, and the impact with the infield was pretty violent.
Surprisingly all pieces were present and accounted for at the impact site. There isn't much in the way of packing room in this bird. I'll try a streamer first, (I have a lifetime supply,) but a parachute would be the better way to go based on the weight.
I have a fairly long history with the Estes Mini Shuttle. It was one of the first rockets I cloned back in my early BAR-dom. I lost it here at B6-4 Field on an ill-advised, but spectacular, C6-7 flight. My son had several friends with him that particular Sunday, (forever known as Black Sunday,) and all were impressed by how easily the Mini Shuttle cleared the trees across US 27, and did it look like it was rising on the parachute? This version was part of an eBay lot and was missing the dorsal fin. The rest of it was rough, but it had that kid-built look that made me think of a high school freshman really sweating the details to produce a catalog perfect bird.
The A8-3 flight was as I remembered, quick and fairly high for conditions, kind of like a Goony on steroids. The flight was pretty much done by the time I got my phone pointed up, and the Shuttle looked to be experiencing parawad recovery. The chute never did fill and the collision with the infield was as violent as with the Lucky Seven, but the Mini Shuttle survived without damage.
As I remember, I picked up the Estes Star Rider as a late night eBay Buy It Now. (Really, who can resist that command?) It was a fairly cheap price for a vintage kit and I always thought it was a cool looking bird. The decals were pretty unpleasant to work with, to the point that they're still only present on one side.
This is about all you'll get out of the Star Rider. My phone suffered an ID10T error when setting up for the flight video. Great A8-3 flight. Landed along the third base line as had so many of my previous flights on the day. The video lasts 1 second and is the whole flight start to finish. Is that an option? Should I bring my kids next time? Maybe upgrade to a C- phone instead of a smart phone?
This old Estes V-2 was another late night eBay But It Now. It was just listed as an old V-2 and needed a nose cone, but it was an original Estes K-22 bird. The fins had been incorrectly built with the grain parallel to the body tube, but the boat-tail and the body tube were intact, so I tossed a couple of bucks at it and ordered a nose cone. That was back in 2012. This would be the second flight.
The flight was quick, with a slight arc to the right. It topped out around 258' and ejected the chute as hoped. I didn't hope for the parawad, which I got anyway. The V-2 tumbled quickly to the infield, hitting hard at shortstop and bouncing after the hit. Once again, no damage. Is there such a thing as too lucky?
The Semroc Aerobee Hi was next up, but I switched things up by using a 1/2A6-2 that I found at the bottom of the range box. Lightweight model, minimum diameter, I figured it would deliver the same performance that the A8-3 gave for the heavier models. My figures were clearly based on bad data.
For conditions, the flight was actually about perfect, topping out somewhere north of 107'. One thing I hadn't checked before flight was the parachute. Did I mention that the last flight had been in 2013? Yeah, the parachute was pretty well welded together, and as a result, just kind of trailed behind at ejection like a pom-pom. The winds had shifted again, and the short center field recovery was nice and soft and the flight ended without damage.
I still had several rockets prepped in the box, but not having planned this as well as usual, some of them would remain unflown on the day. I had a limited amount of mini engine plugs, and they're fairly tough to find once they've been used. (I regularly reuse the yellow and pink plugs, once having used two plugs for a whole box of rockets.) Because of this, the other X-Prize rocket I'd brought, the Gauchito, remained unflown, as did the Firehawk. The Estes Converter had a glue joint fail at the top connectoer, and the Vector Force and Centuri were overpowered for conditions. I did have one 1/2A3-4T left, and just before I was about to leave, I found the adapter to allow a single stage flight of the Semroc Midget.
I associate the Midget with Doug Sams the same way the WSR guys associate an E9 CATO with me, and anything Semroc brings to mind Carl, so the choice was easy. The rod had remained in the same position for the last few flights, and I left it the same way for the Midget launch. It turned out to be the highest flight of the day, topping out over 343'. It also arced over behind me and for a moment I was afraid that it would drift into the trees on the hill behind me, but the nose blow recovery worked in my favor. It landed in the grass in left center field, a nice, soft end to my day of flying.
With the exception of the damaged launch lug on the fin tip of the Semroc VF-261, it had pretty much been a perfect day of flying. I was feeling good about myself at this point, an almost perfect day after a long layoff. I gathered my expended casings, loaded everything in the car, and walked over to the garbage can to dispose of the detritus.
Right above the can was the remnants of one of my past flights, the Space Plowboy. That hadn't been quite as perfect a day. Stay humble, y'all.
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