Wright Stuff launch, 8-13-23

 This was a surprise launch.  We were scheduled to fly on Saturday, but I was going to miss because of a 60th birthday party and goat herding for one of my buds.  As luck would have it, the wind forecast would cause for the cancellation of the Saturday launch and a move to a Sunday launch.  The second Sunday is usually the day we meet with friends to do breakfast, but as of Saturday no one had given breakfast a thought, so no plans were made.  HUZZAH!  I was clear for launch on Sunday.  BUT WAIT!!!!  My wife decided to take the ball and run with it and sent out the email.  Soon we had a 10am table for us and four friends.  I didn't complain.  It meant I'd get goetta for breakfast.  "Peanut butter box is here."

So, after a Ham and Swiss Fritatta with green onions, I headed to the field a little before noon.  This meant it would be after 1pm before I got flying, but goetta, remember?  There had already been a CATO before I arrived, so at least I wouldn't have to provide that.  As it was, I had other contributions to make.

My last WSR launch back around Father's Day had been something of a farce.  I brought home a lot of damaged birds and another that never left the pad after lighting only one motor.  Even before I left for the field, I knew that my first flight of the day would be the USS Atlantis with the FlisKits canted cluster.  It owed me.

Don't get too fired up.  It looked great on the pad back in June, too.  That said, this would not be a second failure.  Flying on a 2xC6-5 load, the Atlantis hit all the marks.  It left the pad without impingement, stayed oriented to show the flightline the Michael Schenker smoke trail, and landed without breaking off one of the tubes.  The flight was almost dead straight to around 500', ejecting as it was still moving forward somewhat, and starting swinging like a pendulum as it recovered.  It landed softly in the grass to the right of the high-power pads.  It was a great start.  I should have seen trouble lurking.

Trying to keep my hot streak going, I chose a never before flown, unpainted rocket that I almost forgot when packing, the PemTech Kraken.  I actually had it prepped for another launch that hadn't worked out, so it had been sitting in an out of the way spot when I was gathering my victims at 7:30am.  The only reason I found it was because I was looking for my parachute case.  As it was, I found both.

All I know about the Kraken is what I've read in reviews.  I built mine to be E-motor capable, but not seeing a whole lot of E-motor flights listed, I chose to go with a D12-5 in the shakedown flight.  Like the Atlantis, the Kraken boosted quite straight to around the 500' mark.  Unlike the Atlantis, it then drifted away from us across the soccer field, really looking like it was heading to the creek or the corn. I began walking after it almost immediately, and was about to see it land at the far edge of the last soccer field by the creek, corn and road.  One final gust could have sent it to any of the three, so I counted my blessings and helped another flyer who wasn't quite as lucky.  His had not only cleared the soccer field, but had landed on the bridge in traffic.  It was recovered with slight road rash, but who doesn't have some of that.

Flight #3 would end my lucky streak.  I had been trying to decide on a color combination for the T.H.O.Y. Wren for quite a while.  I had previously flown it 8 years ago in a red and black combination, but hadn't really liked how those colors looked together.  I tried gold and black earlier this year, but that didn't grab me either.  I recently picked up another red and black combination that I really liked, and it was this one that came to the field with me on this day.

This would be the first flight since 2015, all because of mud and paint issues, but I was pretty pumped about it.  The Wren was a sturdy and stable performer back in 2015, and I expected nothing less in 2023.  The flight itself was perfect, an E12-6 out away from the flightline that flirted with 800'.  It ejected a lot early, but I didn't anticipate that being an issue and we watched it drift onto the soccer property.

The scene that greeted me at the recovery zone was a shock.  The soccer complex has a lot of grass, but also an access road and some reclaimed asphalt parking pads.  The access roads are gravel, but they're hard packed, so anything that lands on them is guaranteed some kind of fin damage.  I got the deluxe package.  The Wren had hit the access road.  One fin was laying at the point of impact, jaggedly snapped off and not repairable.  Another fin was cracked along the fillet and part of the tip had been chewed away.  Even the "undamaged" fin had road rash.  At the moment I'm undecided as to what I'm going to do with it going forward.

I only had two flights of unflown birds on this day, (although I had several others in the car ready to go.)  The Kraken was the first.  The Estes Warp II was the second.  My brother-in-law had one that he found in a salvage store years ago, (along with an FSI Hercules and a LOC Lil' Nuke.)  It had been built as a single stage bird and the paint looked like nail polish.  Still, it was a cool looking bird and a decent flyer.  Mine is pretty standard, and two stage as intended.

I chose a B6-0/B6-6 combo for the first flight, just to be on the safe side.  I thought about flying it at B6-4 Field, but things are a little tight for unpredictable staged flights.  Good thing.  The Warp II left the pad boosting fairly straight, but began drifting left when the breeze caught the big fins.  The slight delay during staging and the breeze combined to cause the sustainer to arc back over the flightline considerably.  The normal flight setup at B6-4 Field would have put the sustainer in the trees at the top of the hill.  At eRockets field it just meant that it was over another baseball field, and it recovered safely in home run territory.

Another old vet that hadn't seen flight time since 2015 would be on the pad for flight #5.  The first flight of the Shrox Skonk Wulf had resulted in a wiggly flight path that obviously needed nose weight.  It took me eight years, but I finally had it ready for a second flight.

The E12-6 flight benefitted greatly from the added nose weight.  It left the pad arcing out toward the soccer fields, but with only one or two slight wiggles, a vast improvement over the previous flight.  That one had been borderline unstable and looked ready to cross the border at each flip of the tail.  The Wulf ejected nice and easy out to the right of our high-power pads, then began following the breeze into the soccer complex.  It bounced on impact, but not violently, so I still had hope of no damage.  When I reached the landing site my hope was dashed.  One of the small wing-tip fins had broken off along the glue joint.  An easy fix, and hopefully the next flight will have paint and decals.  Check back in 2031.

The next flight hurt.  I'd just finished cutting and replacing a fin lost on the last flight of my Estes Sentinel, a clone made using Excelsior decals.  It hadn't been repainted yet because I was trying to figure how to mask it without sacrificing the other decals, but it was flightworthy again, so I thought I'd give it some flight time.  The original was an 18mm powered bird, but since mine was a clone, I went with 24mm power.  This flight would be on a D12-5, a pretty standard flight on a field of this size.

This flight started out looking great.  It left the pad almost dead straight to around 800'.  We counted off the delay and looked expectantly for the bright green chute.  Nothing.  The whole flightline was still looking skyward for the chute off to the left of the pads when one of the spectators mentioned that it had come down on the ballfield behind us.  This confused everyone on the flightline as it was way too quick for it to have come down.  Maybe I was slow on the uptake.  I walked behind the flightline and sure enough, the Sentinel sat in the middle of the ballfield, but I didn't see the bright green chute anywhere.  I checked the sky to see if it was floating away and saw nothing.  All the while I was walking toward the landing zone, and when I reached the fence, the horrible truth dawned on me.  Suddenly I could see the bright green parachute, only I could see it through the side of the body tube.  And the nose cone was sticking straight out of the ground.  I knew from experience that this was not good.  Postmortem showed that there had been an ejection event, but with only a small portion of the clay cap gone from the D12-5, it hadn't been much of one.  The nose cone pulled from the ground undamaged, but took a pretty good pull to do so.  The Sentinel was crushed from tip to just below the top ends of the strakes.  Essentially, I have a nose cone and a fin can if I decide to rebuild.  The jury has not yet returned on that possibility.

Sentinel, from Estes!  Now foldable!

The next bird on the pad had once experienced an odd ejection charge of its own.  The Viking IV is an upscale of the FSI Fiking IV from back in my king size days.  I had become interested in the Viking lineup after Bill Saidon introduced the Viking 1 as a BMS Clone of the Month.  Bill's was a 1:1 clone, and I actually built the Viking III and V that way, but for some reason I decided to go big on the Viking II and IV.  While flying with my brother-in-law and the Tri City Skybusters up in Amherst, Ohio, the Viking IV was carrying a keychain camera and flying on an E9-4.  The ejection charge sounded mammoth from the flightline and a separation was noted.  The body came in ballistic and landed hard to the left of the flightline, while the nose cone and parachute came down directly in front of us.  The body tube was crushed to the point that I had to cut away 6 to 8" from the top.  When I retrieved the nose cone and parachute, I also found the ejection baffle.  The force of the ejection charge had been enough to blast away two king sized glue fillets.  The keychain camera had filmed the whole flight and recovery, and you can hear the ground approaching just before the picture cuts out.  Terrible flight, but in a weirdy entertaining way.  A shorter Viking IV would be the one that came to the pad for flight #7 on the day.

Flying on an E12-6, the Viking left the pad and immediately began climbing to the left.  It topped out around 1000' and slowly began to tip over.  Ejection occurred right at apogee and the rocket somehow passed through the shock cord, which then tangled with the tube fins.  As a result, the whole mess began recovering Centuri Super Kit-style, pointing into the wind and heading for the far edges of the soccer fields.  It was a long walk for the second to last flight of the day, but I'd made longer earlier.

At this point in the day the once large crowd had dissipated and those left were approaching the pads less and less.  I still had a back seat full of birds that hadn't flown in a decade or longer; the ARG Black Brant IV-B (Hawaii) which last flew in 2006, or hadn't flown at all; the Estes M.I.R.V., which still needed adjustment to the internal launch rod.  My last flight on this day would be my Enerjet Athena clone that would be making flight #3 and the first on an E12 after surviving two E9 flights.

The Athena flight was the perfect way to close out the day.  It was a standard E12-6 flight, completely without drama.  The flight boosted slightly left off pad and began leaning slightly toward the flightline as it came up to power.  It topped out around 900' and was tipping over when the ejection charge fired.  I made my last trip of the day into the soccer fields and when I returned to the pads, teardown had already started.  Hydration was the order of the day at this point, with food a close second.

After striking the range and packing everything up, I went looking for dinner in earnest.  I wasn't in a position to be terribly picky at this point, and the drink was going to be the most important part of my meal.  I settled on a Sonic down the road and sat at the drive-thru window while they made my burger.  When the guy brought it out, he asked "What is that?" and pointed to my passenger seat.  There was a cooler on the floor and the USS Atlantis draped across the seat, so I figured he was talking about the rocket.  I explained that I'd just come from a launch in Dayton and it was come one, come all.  At that moment I wished I had a flyer to give him.  Every now and then I get a reminder that what we take for granted looks seriously out there to the general public.  Under normal circumstances I'd have been happy to sit and jaw with him about rockets, but I doubted that the line of cars behind me would think that was a great idea.  Dude, we're online at Wright Stuff Rocketeers 703 - National Association of Rocketry (nar.org)  See you next time.

Mini-Palooza at B6-4 Field

 This launch happened several weeks back, but life kept me from sitting down to do this post in the weeks since.  I had an idea for Mini-Palooza while trying to organize my basement back in June.  I was pulling rockets that hadn't flown in several years out of my totes when it struck me that many of them were mini-powered.  I don't need to be struck repeatedly.  Well, usually.  This was the sequence of events that led to me declaring a Mini-Palooza event at B6-4 Field.

Launching hadn't happened for a while, and in that while a lot of my gear had been scattered.  I'd shown up at the field a week or so before the Palooza and found that my pad was missing the piece that goes between the rod and the tripod.  I later found it while cleaning out my car, but when I arrived at the field on this day, I found that I was missing the blast deflector.  I made a judgement call to not scrub the launch since I was flying all mini birds and using a standoff.  Judgement has never been one of my strong suits.

After much consideration, first off the pad would be the Estes Lucky Seven.  Ah, who am I kidding.  I just grabbed the closest one to me.  This hadn't been flown since earlier this year, which kind of blows my "seldom flown" idea out of the water.  Nonetheless, it would fly on an A10-3T after two previous flights on 1/2As.  

I was expecting decent altitude from this flight, but overall I was somewhat disappointed.  The flight was fairly straight off the pad to about 300'.  Ejection occurred fairly early, and the parachute failed to deploy.  The rocket came back to the ground rather quickly and hit hard in the grass next to the pad.  Had this been an infield landing it likely would have cost a fin or two.

Flight #2 was the Estes Sprite, a rocket I cloned back in 2013, which was when it last flew.  I'd made it mini-powered since I'd heard tale of other Sprites flying out of sight on regular 18mm motors.  I thought mini power would make for easy-to-find recoveries at B6-4 Field.  

The A3-4T flight was quick and I felt lucky to get the launch pic, especially considering what I saw when I looked up to catch the rest of the flight.  Nothing.  It seemed like it was just overhead at one point, and the ejection charge clearly sounded like it happened just above me, but despite scanning the skies I never saw orange, either the rocket or the streamer.  I walked the whole field looking for a flash of orange.  There were an amazing number of Reese's Peanut Butter cup wrappers, but no sign of the Sprite.  (Apparently not everyone is concerned about taking their trash with them.)  I reluctantly gave up the search after ten minutes.  

Third off the pad would be the Semroc Triton.  I wasn't all that interested in the Triton when I first saw it, I bought it because at the time I bought everything Carl put out just to keep him putting stuff out.  Not sure if I bought two like I normally did, but I'd say it's likely.  Secondly, it was one of the original Semroc birds back in the late 60's.  This was the third paint scheme I'd tried, all of which featured some neon orange to aid in recovery.  Since I'd already experienced "fire & forget" rockets, I decided to make the Triton mini-powered to cut down on altitude.

The previous flight of the Triton had ended with a nose-dive into the asphalt parking lot of the school, which was what occasioned the repaint.  The pad was set up almost dead center on the field, behind second base.  The flight was fairly high and straight.  The Triton was still heading up at ejection and was pushed even higher by the ejection charge.  It tipped over and returned to the infield heading straight down.  I was expecting the worst, having had a Custom Sunracer completely disassemble itself on a nose down infield landing, but that one had been shot at the infield while facing down.  The Triton just hit hard and bounced.  Since the nose cone was spongy from the 2015 contact with the parking lot, there wasn't much chance of additional damage as long as the fins stayed on.  I have no flight pics because I evidently hit some kind of button on my phone that caused the whole flight to be condensed to 1.5 seconds.

Looking back, I'm guessing that I bought so many of the Estes X-Prize kits because there wasn't all that much interesting coming out of the Big E back then.  I think the only one's I'm missing are the Space Ship One and Cosmos Mariner.  That said, the Gauchito is my favorite of the bunch, (with the Starchaser a close second.)  I liked the looks of the kit, and figured I could use it as the basis for a Little Joe at some point.  Eventually I just built it as intended during a build frenzy, and once I flew it, I was impressed.

This was a stovepipe A10-3T flight, straight up to 311' then straight down to the infield just fifteen feet from the launch pad.  The parachute did deploy and unfurl, but still hit hard.  Surprisingly, there was no damage.

Damage?  You want damage?  Well the Estes Micron would be the flight for you.  The Micron was one of my earlier eBay buys, and a favorite built rocket purchase.  It had great paint and patina and only needed a new shock cord to be ready for flight.  

Loaded with an 1/2A3-4T, the Micron left the pad with a gentle arc heading toward third base.  The flight looked perfect from the ground, and I didn't notice anything until it landed.  When I got to the landing site I found the micron missing a fin and with the body tube area under the fin delaminated.  I looked all around the landing area, but found no sign of the fin, leading me to believe the contact occurred at ejection rather than landing, and I somehow missed the fin falling to the field.

Several years ago I took to the internet to find rockets to clone in "close enough" fashion.  One of the catalogs I turned up was the 1969 MRI product sheet on Ninfinger.   Ninfinger Productions: 1969 Model Rocket Industries Catalog  MRI was a predecessor to MPC and AVI, and I got interested in close-enoughing an MRI Zeus.  I hammered mine together as best as I could, but Scott Hansen has since posted the particulars in a thread at YORF.  Ye Olde Rocket Forum - MRI Zeus #3-7202 (rocketshoppe.com)

Surprisingly tiny, I decided to go mini-power with this one.  Even with the smaller engine mount there is very little room for recovery equipment.  It had flown previously, and well, on an A3-4T in the cornfield, so I expected similar results on this 1/2A3-4T flight.  Not.  Even.  Close.  BUD!  The Zeus started skywriting as soon as it cleared the rod.  I flailed around with the camera hoping to catch some of the message, but only managed to catch it coasting toward left-center field sideways.  It landed and the ejection charge fired almost simultaneously.  I waited a moment to see if anything appeared to be on fire, but the grass was damp and green from recent rains, so I lucked out there.  The Zeus was undamaged, and a look at the flight pics shows the nose cone flailing around outside of the body tube.  That may be what caused the instability, or it could be that it just pulled loose while the rocket was lurching around the sky.  I'll give it another shot just to be sure.

The Zeus stuck the landing.  Sort of.

Flight #7 was the Estes Mini Fat Boy, the rocket that should have led the return of a whole new batch of Goonies from Estes.  I wasn't wildly excited about this when it hit the pegs, but I've come to consider it as a perfect beginner's bird, much like the Baby Bertha.  Easy to build, easy to finish, it's a great choice for flying on small fields.  Of course, it's out of production.

This should have been a perfect flight for the field.  It was an A10-3T flight, which usually provides a flight high enough to be entertaining, without coming close to overflying the field.  This one had the altitude down pat, but the same bugaboo that had plagued other parachute flights on the day caught up with this one.  Parawad.  All because I didn't feel like making a trip back home.  As I said, altitude was excellent, somewhere around 300'.  Ejection occurred around apogee, and the whole wounded duck mess came crashing down in left field.

I had a Wolverine in my 1970's fleet, but I can't remember ever flying it.  Because of that, it was high on my list of projects when I discovered cloning.  Can you have a mini launch without having a Wolverine on the pad at some point?  At the same time, has anyone ever had a stable flight with a Wolverine?  

Well, I still haven't seen a stable Wolverine flight.  I think the issue with my 2001-02 build is that I didn't angle the wing fins enough.  I really need to try again, but the motivation isn't there.  This flight would be an A10-3T.  No chance of trouble because the Wolverine shakes around so much during the flight that it's scrubbing altitude from the moment it leaves the pad.  Today it made it around 200', which is pretty much what I expect on every flight.  Though wiggly, the flight was largely straight and wound up ejecting just after forward motion stopped over shortstop.  True to form, the parachute couldn't be bothered and it landed hard in the grass in short left field.

The Loadlifter 1-A would be the next to last flight on the day.  This was an Estes D.O.M. plan from February, 1964.  I was 18 months old.  Still, it spoke to me when I was making one of my frequent trips through the archives looking for ideas.  

The flight of the Loadlifter was an oddity on the afternoon.  Unlike every other flight that headed out from the pad at liftoff, the Loadlifter arced behind me and to the right.  Altitude was excellent, with the 1/2A3-4T taking it up around the 250' mark.  Ejection occurred as it was tipping over and it began a fast fall to the centerfield grass.  Again, recovery wasn't what was hoped for as the chute almost-sorta-kinda deployed at the 40' mark, slowing things down, but not actually acting like a parachute.  Yep, parawad again.  Man, I miss my chute powder.

The last flight hurt.  When I first started flying in 1977, the other kids in the neighborhood all bought their rockets at the short lived JC Penney Toyland in the fabulous Newport Shopping Center.  My brother and I chose Betas, but there were several Mosquitos, a Rogue and a Javelin/Super Flea combo.  It took me a while, but I eventually recreated our neighborhood fleet, and the Javelin/Super Flea was the last I finished.  I had the Javelin along with me, but the Super Flea got the call as the final bird off the pad for Mini-Palooza I.

The flight would be on a 1/4A-3T, so no worries, right?  Kind of a harmless popup on the infield with the bases juiced kind of flight.  No runners advance.  No runs score.  Then the catcher loses it in the sun and thus starts the cha-cha.  The Flea left the pad angling out over the infield, which was the first bad omen.  Then at ejection, instead of separating the two halves of the rocket, the motor fired itself into oblivion and the Flea became ballistic.  Even without seeing it in front of me, I knew it was bad by the sound.  Thwacks like that mean broken rocket parts, which was exactly the case.  The Flea completely tossed one fin and loosened two others.  

By this time I was tired of fighting the flies and had damaged two of my favorite minis and lost another.  I packed up and left the field, dispirited about my batting average on the day.  But first, a photo op of the survivors.

Yeah, that space is where the Sprite should be.  As I was pulling down the street by the school, I impulsively turned into the driveway, hoping against hope that I'd find my missing bird.  I saw it as soon as I entered the driveway, sitting where anyone else would have run it over if it would have been a school day with normal traffic.  I called my day a success.