One might say I got a late start on the day, but the same one might say that an opportunity to join friends for breakfast is not one that should be missed. Yep, I arrived at the WSR launch a little before one, but despite that I had an excellent day. Well, one or two quibbles.
The crowd was strangely light, especially when compared to the previous launch. We had one ARC team and a few regulars and the pads were kept fairly busy. I started my day off with a rocket that was last seen aflame after an E9 CATO back in 2000. My FRW SLS Wizard started out life as an Estes Executioner, but I had other plans. It had a fairly busy cornfield life until the CATO, but the crisped and crunchy hulk was brought home and was in limbo until a recent burst of shop energy when I realized that it was easily repairable. It will never look as good as it once did, but it's much better than I thought it would be.
The flight would be on an E12-4, but as leadoff flights go, it was kind of a disappointment. In the past it flew well on the E9, so I was expecting more of the same with the E12, but it was clearly laboring as it left the pad. It arced immediately to the left and had long tipped over when the ejection charge fired. Mike Rohde and I were counting off the seconds before the ejection charge. After four seconds passed without an incident, Mike said "Now would be a good time." Apparently, that was the key, because the charge fired almost instantly, although well past four seconds and more like six. The recovery was violent, but there was no damage even with a somewhat hard hit on the soccer field. The first thing I did was check for cracked fins. The second was check the delay. It was an E12-4.
Flight #2 would be the SLS Taurus and would show what a normal E12 would look like. This rocket was built back in 2005 as a 3x18mm cluster flyer, but with every flight it incurred some damage. The last flight at NARAM 47 had been particularly rough as it landed hard on the access road at VOA, badly damaging two fins to the point that it was going to need a bottom end rebuild. My fascination with clustering had passed by this point, and I decided to rebuild it with a 24mm motor mount.
The Taurus left the pad as expected, just like the E-motors of old. No clawing for altitude. No low and slow. It cranked hard off the pad and leaned left over the soccer field, topping out at 993'. It landed just off to the right of the pad on the hard packed football practice field, hitting hard and shedding fins. One was torn completely off and another was delaminated, but the repairs should be easy.
Third on the bill would be the FRW Viking II, an upscale that I did of the FSI Viking II. It's led a rough life since it was built in 2012 including the last flight where it was dragged across the asphalt at a Muncie, IN launch. It's fairly battered, but it has never had to have parts replaced. This would be a D12 flight, the first time for a D motor.
The D12 proved to be more than enough motor to propel this bird to a respectable altitude. It left the pad leaning left and topped out at 749'. It was pointing down when the ejection charge fired and came back toward the flightline in a hurry on a chute that was more reef than chute. It landed next to a fellow flyer who was prepping his next rocket. He barely noticed. 😎
This brought another D12 flight to the pad, the FSI Maverick. It's a rarity among my FSI clones in that I didn't upscale it, just tried to get close. Up until today it had flown on nothing but E9s and an E12, but this flight proved it to be a versatile flyer.
The D12 flight proved what I'd always suspected, that building the Maverick to be E-motor capable was little more than overkill. That said, overkill seemed to be a cornerstone of the FSI canon, so it's a wash. The Maverick flight was much like the bulk of my flights on the day, leaning to the left off the pad, ejecting over the soccer fields at 782', then a slow drift back to the field on a heavily reefed chute. The Maverick took it a step further. It drifted back across the field in front of us, obviously planning to stay on the field, but getting everything out of the flight it possibly could. It drifted almost to the back baseball fields and missed duplicating Carter's trash can feat by a foot at best. In the end it wound up draped over the safety fence. If I could, I'd have taken that on every flight.
The less said about flight #5, the better. In every way. I've struggled to get a decent flight out of the Sunward Galactic Wave for years, but it has forever seemed to thwart me. It was set up on the pad with three other rockets and should have been fourth off the pad. I was watching the first flight with camera in hand and when flight #1 launched, flight #4 went along with it. The flight itself wasn't really one that I'd say I was proud of, a corkscrewing mess to 682', but if you're detailing the flight in a blog, a few pics are nice to have. I did manage to get one of the recovery. Yay me.
I've been on something of a Thunder kick lately, having flown my Semroc ThunderBee and Centuri ThunderRoc clone in previous launches. This caused me to dig out and dust off the Semroc ThunderStrike, Carl's BT-55 version of the family lineup. This rocket hadn't flown since a cornfield launch in 2019. It incurred a broken fin and a tube dent on landing that day. The broken fin I get. It's kind of par for the course with these birds. The tube dent was puzzling because it was above the separation spot and would have to have occurred on landing. The plan is to cut the tube above the dent and insert a coupler to shore things up, but I've yet to get around to that.
The ThunderStrike flight was interesting in that everyone thought it was a goner. The E12-6 flight followed the flight path of the day, left off the pad and out over the soccer fields. It topped out at 1183' and began traversing quickly back across the field toward Rip Rap Road. I started walking immediately, anticipating the worst and surprised to see it fall short of the road, just past the on-deck circle. While I was walking, one of the ARC teams flew their rocket and I watched it follow the same path as mine. I waved them back and told them I'd pick up both rockets, and when I turned around I found that their rocket had actually landed on the yellow line of Rip Rap Road. Two cars passed in quick succession, the breeze from both catching the chute and causing the rocket to drag up and down the asphalt. By the time I jogged to the landing spot, several other cars had passed. At the landing spot the altimeter was beeping out its stream of info, so I was extra careful in gathering the pieces, the whole time mindful of the crazed traffic that usually flies up and down that stretch of road. Once I got it packed up I went back and did the same for the ThunderStrike. I walked back to the flightline with both rockets, the ThunderStrike agreeably silent while the ARC rocket beeped and booped like an angry droid.
This next flight hurt. Back in the EMRR days I would occasionally receive kits for review from manufacturers, usually low power kits in my case. The Thrustline Cherokee D was one of the early kits that I received for review. Thrustline produced old clone kits and originals, and I also bought a Gyroc kit and a clip whip from them before they ceased production. (Someone was impressed enough with the clip whip to adopt it.)
With the ThunderStrike flight fresh in my mind and with previous experience with the impressive altitude that a Cherokee D was capable of, I took what I considered to be typical precautions with the pad setup. I leaned it into the wind more than I did any of my flights on the day, thinking that it would allow for a flight into the breeze. Liftoff told another story. There was nothing that suggested a flight to the left. Rod whip saw to that. It went dead straight off the pad, and it was immediately obvious that, barring a miracle, it was likely going to recover well off the field. I began walking as soon as I shut the camera off and made it to the end of the flight line before it became obvious that the only thing I was walking for was a good spot for a last view of the rocket as it settled into the trees behind the old eRockets location. Watching a rocket tree itself is the loneliest part of this hobby.
I still had several rockets with me that I really wanted to fly, but after losing the Cherokee D I had no real reason to sacrifice another one. That made me rethink the Semroc Egg Crate, MRI Zenith Two and Semroc Marauder, still awaiting a flight in the completed livery. That said, I had gliders. The first one that came to mind was the Edmonds Tinee, a mini-engine powered glider that was currently packed with a 1/2A3-2T. Even this caused me to pause and think. It hadn't flown since 2013, and I really had no idea what the flights had been like 12 years prior. The reason for the long layoff was a broken wingtip fin which I had repaired the night before. The heat was another factor as I realized that thermals could just cause it to drift off like I'd seen many do at NARAMs over the years. I decided to throw caution to the wind and try my luck.
This was a fantastic flight from the start. The Tinee boosted slightly right, but quickly established a long, curving path back to the left. It still had more in the tank when it levelled off and ejected at 156' and immediately settled into a glide over toward the soccer fields. This would have been fin because of the large amount of landing area out that way, but as soon as it began to glide, it began introducing a left turn into the flight path, all the while steadily losing altitude. It eventually landed just in front of the mid-power pads, a perfect, inspiring flight. You just know that inspiration would come back to bite me on the butt.
Flight #9 would be the sister ship to the Tinee, the Edmonds Cici, which was the first Edmond's product I ever bought. My original had been the staple of my early fleet and, if not for the softball upgrades at 1/2A6-2 Field, might still be flying. It had unfortunately cleared the fence and landed on the third base line. None of my recovery crew were around and I was far past the point when I trusted myself to climb a chain link fence, so there it stayed, likely thrown in the garbage when the next game was scheduled or maybe given away to a younger sibling. My current Cici was bought for my son back when he still had an interest. For some reason I never got the on-pad glamour shot of the Cici.
I call this next part "things that give me pause". Or at least "should". I'd loaded the Cici with a B4-2 because that was what I had in the shop at the time. A whole box of A8-3s were down the hall, but how much of a difference could it make, a B4 over an A8? I was about to find out. To be honest, I thought I'd signed the death warrant for the Cici as it left the pad. The boost was strong and to the right, powering the light glider to 311' before the ejection charge fired and let it choose a path to ply its trade. It chose to head toward the SW toward the far end of the football property, out where the woods, the river and the train tracks resided. At this point it was all out of my hands and I managed to keep it in site as it followed an arrow-straight path toward doom. I was about to give up all hope when it suddenly introduced the slightest bit of a left turn into the path, now heading for the Rip Rap Roadhouse and the Shake Shack, neither great choices, but the turn broadened and it began leaning into the new path with some gusto. As it headed more toward the soccer fields, still turning, it suddenly caught a thermal and rose noticeably, but kept turning. By now it had completed the turn and was heading back across the football field toward the baseball fields and Rip Rap Road, but it was obvious that it wouldn't make either. It nosed in deep in the football practice fields out by the maintenance sheds. I breathed for the first time in several minutes.
In retrospect, flight #10 should have been my recently repaired SAI Mini-Bat, recently repaired and sitting in the car with a B4-2 loaded. Instead, I went with a 1/4A3-3T in the previously flown Edmond's Tinee. I think the term "fart in church" applies here. If nothing else, I now know that the 1/2A is the least powerful engine for a viable flight with the Tinee.
Yeah, not much recovery room for this to transition to glide. But it was funny, so mission points there. As things stand, it's starting to get to that time of year when the big fields get cleared. The previous day my wife and I were working a volunteer event down near where she works. On the way home we noticed that the soybeans were looking awfully dry, a sure sign of an impending harvest. Cornfield or beanfield flying is right around the corner. I'm hoping for one more football field launch, but there's always B6-4 Field.
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