To be perfectly honest, flying rockets was the last thing on my mind on this humid Memorial Day. The weather had been almost uniformly hideous the rest of the holiday weekend, with heavy rain alternating with downpours. B6-4 Field was seen to be underwater on Friday when I came home from work, so I busied myself in the sanding room.
I'd been toting around a crate of rockets in the trunk of my car since March when I last had hope of flying. They were still there, so when my wife decided that she was going to spend the day in the yard and with no sanding in my near future, I decided to take a drive up to see how the field looked. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was set up in short left field. The flags were listlessly fluttering to the west, so I figured flying from left field would give me maximum recovery area. The ground was squishy and puddles were noticeable the further one went toward center. Right was a mess. I vowed to avoid it.
First on the pad was the Semroc Mark II, a rocket in between paint jobs. According to my records, it hadn't flown since 2020, likely because it's a fairly vanilla Semroc offering. I can appreciate the historical significance of the rocket, and have even toyed with the idea of setting it up with my Leeds Sweetie Sharpener, but it's kind of in the "permanent wind-tester" position, especially in primer.
The wind-test went well. The flight was higher than expected, topping out at 281' dead above the pad. I showed my rust by neglecting to follow the "up" part of the flight until almost apogee. It ejected as it tipped over, the chute popped, and it began drifting toward the street. In the end, the southward drift ceased just before the edge of the field, and it dropped to the ground on the hillside after flirting with the wires and tree.
Flight #2, my own homage to the TLP Maverick, would let me stretch my legs a bit, so to speak. It's a somewhat piggish BT-60 downscale, so I felt that a B6-4 was warranted.
Pretty sure I said a bad word during this flight. Maybe several stitched into a couplet. The Mav left the pad quickly and arced back rapidly toward deep center field, way, WAY higher than I had expected. It actually cleared center and wound up over Woodfill Avenue, topping out at 334'. There was a kid walking by with his headphones on and he barely even noticed as the rocket recovered three feet to his left in the right lane tire tracks. By the time I got to the landing site, he was long gone. The Mav wound up in the street just a couple of feet off the curb. As expected, it had loosened one of the rear fins on impact. I picked it up and was refolding the chute when some clown in an Altima almost drove over my foot. Amazon delivery. As I was walking back to the launch site, he sped past me leaving the subdivision. Windows up, so he likely didn't hear my critique of his driving skills.
The Mav flight scared me a bit, so I backed things down for flight #3, the Semroc Excalibur. The Excalibur was a curious case. Somehow, I had always envisioned it being bigger than it turned out to be. As it is, it's the perfect size for an A8-3 flight at B6-4 Field. Or so I thought.
The Excalibur is listed on the face card as being able to achieve 200' on an A8-3. It got that easily, topping out at 243'. The flight was stovepipe straight and recovered softly in short left center, just short of the mud bog.
Flight #4 made me realize something. It was my Semroc S.P.E.V. on a B6-4 and as I was hooking it up on the pad, I realized that all four of my first flights on the day had been "body in white" birds, all dressed in nothing but primer. It was an entirely unintentional oversight, but I admit that I checked the rest of the tote to see if I could keep the streak alive for flight #5. No such luck.
I flew my first S.P.E.V. here back in 2004 on a B6-4, also a "body in white" flight. It's a great combo for this field and could be where the idea for B6-4 Field sprung from. This flight was the usual, a smooth, straight shot to 243', then a perfect recovery just a few feet west of where the Excalibur landed. Things were marshier those few feet out there and the S.P.E.V. stuck the landing, standing up on one stuck fin. On the other hand, mud works well as a sanding sealer once it dries.
Fifth flight on the day would be the first in paint, the Centuri Stellar Starlifter. That said, I'm not a fan of how it turned out, so it doesn't fly a lot. Something about the shade of blue I chose just sucked the life out of the design for me.
The Starlifter really got up there, topping out at 318' and doing it quickly. By the time I turned the camera toward it, the flight was over and the recovery had started. Unfortunately, recovery wasn't much to talk about. The shotgun ejection charge not only woke up all the neighboring canines, it also blasted the motor out toward first base. I was trying to figure out what separated on the flight and where everything was going to land. I caught what turned out to be the engine casing from the corner of my eye, then realized that the rest of the rocket was coming down swiftly without the benefit of a recovery device. Impact was hard and I feared damage from the hit, but it survived unscathed.
What can you say about the Spacemaster? I got interested in this one because it was so obviously a clone of the Estes Satellite Interceptor, one of the great Estes sci-fi kits. I happened to have the nose cone from an Estes Venom kit that I got on clearance, so it was an easy project. That was before I saw the color rendering. Gold, white, red and blue? I can say fugly.
Unfortunately, this is where it ends for the Spacemaster. It was an A8-3 flight and ultimately successful, despite a recovery issue with the parawad chute. It topped out at 228' and landed just on the outfield grass behind second base. There was an igniter issue, which I have video of, and the aftermath of the flight. All I have of the flight is a corrupted file.
The Semroc Centurion got its taste of immorality several years back when I hung it on the wire along Woodfill Avenue during a flight with a keychain camera. Centurion on the wire.wmv Obviously, I got it back after an evening spent swinging in the breeze. This involved snagging the body tube and slicing the shock cord the next morning, which left the nose cone still on the wire and a zippered body tube. It took a few years, but I got a new cone and cut off the minor zipper. Unless it was side by side with another Centurion you'd never know the difference.
By this time I had attained two groups of spectators, one group was three Woodfill students, the other a couple of dog walkers. The B6-4 flight was excellent until ejection, reaching 337' and deploying the chute as it tipped over. It never got any better than that, as the parachute trailed behind the hurtling rocket all the way back to deep left center. The rocket bounced on impact, at least most of it did. One fin remained stuck in the soft earth of the outfield. The lady on the hill had a piece of advice for me. "You know, you can keep that from happening if you use talcum powder on the parachute." I assured her that I knew but couldn't muster the enthusiasm to make the 25-foot walk to the trunk of my car where I'd forgotten mine. I don't think she got the joke.
I was kind of shocked to see the Semroc V-1.5 on the list of rockets that hadn't been flown since 2021 or earlier. It seems like a frequent flyer here at B6-4 Field, but it last flew in 2020. At some point previously I had flown it here on a B6-4, which is stretching the capability of the rocket on a field of this size. I got it back, but I'm not sure I'd try that trick again.
The V-1.5 flew on an A8-3 and the flight topped out a 327'. It appeared to still be heading up at ejection, but the streamer did its bit. The chute acted much the same way as the Centurion chute had, like it was unable to decide if this was worth opening for. The V-1.5 hit hard on the infield and was stuck standing at an angle, a fin having hit the mud fairly hard, but without damage. If this had been July rather than May, I'd be telling a story about replacing a fin. Sometimes a little rain is a good thing. Or a lot in this case.
The Semroc Vega was next on the list, with me not realizing that it had just flown here last year. That's okay. It's shown itself to be a reliable flyer on a B6-4 here, and I needed reliability at the time.
If nothing else, I got the best liftoff shot of the day out of this flight. The B6-4 carried it to 322' and, once again, that powder would have come in handy. The Vega came in hot and landed nose down in the center field swamp. My recovery crew tossed caution to the winds and ran out to retrieve it, which probably help keep the damage to a minimum. The top of the body tube soaked in some moisture, enough that the nose cone would no longer fit, but not enough to deform to tube. A little sanding will fix it up for the next flight.
Next up was my original Centuri Vector V, picked up via "Buy It Now" back when I worked third shift. It was opened, so there was no question about whether or not I would build it. Cheap thrills.
This would actually only be the second ever flight and the first since it was painted. After a false start, and with my recovery crew ready, the Vector V fired up on an A8-3. The flight was straight to 311', with our old pal parawad handling the recovery. The grass landing was plenty soft, even with fiber fins, and the recovery crew had it back to the pad before the smoke had cleared.
The breeze was becoming more insistent, my recovery crew lost interest, and I was thinking 10 flights was a nice, round number to stop on. That said, flight #11 would be the Semroc Astrobee 350, another minimum diameter bird that flirted with the edges of B6-4 Field on an A8-3.
With the field all to myself again and the breeze at my back I did a countdown from 5 and set the Astrobee off. It let the breeze take it across the field toward the hill, a troublesome sign. Not only was the hill a hazard because of the trees, but the bushes were spreading unchecked down the hill, many of them the thorn variety. I wasn't exactly dressed for a trip unto the thorns, but after a flight to 294', the Astrobee began losing interest in the hill and dropping toward the field on the streamer. It ended at the bottom of the hill, just a few feet from the bushes. It was my sign to go and chalk the day up as a success.
Man, it felt good to get in a flight day, even an abbreviated one. As I mentioned, I managed eleven flights before the breezes kicked up and got them all back. Now I have a short turnaround to my next chance at launching this Saturday with WSR in Huber Heights. No wishes of luck needed as I managed 14 flights up there, but without as much luck as here. Not everything I flew would come home and not all the ones that did come home would be in one piece.
