The current tote of prepped rockets have been ready to go since my last launch a few weeks back, but things kept me from getting to The Grove to fly on the weekends. Because of this I made the decision then that the next launch would be September 3. I retired on September 2, so it made the choice obvious.
September 3 was a flamethrower. At one point in the afternoon the temp gauge in my car showed 100, but I had already done my flying before things got to that point. I made it to the field by 10am, when the temps were only 90. The good news, The Grove had been mowed. The bad news, it was 90.
First flight of the day would be FRW Wizard 1.34x, a BT-50 upscale of my favorite Estes altitude bird. Several years back I went on a tear building multiple tube sizes of my favorite Estes rockets. This might have been inspired by Carl doing a Cherokee C. I have BT-5, BT-20, BT-50 and BT-80 Wizards.
True to form, this Wizard flight really surprised me. My first Wizard back in 1979 was like that, fired from my front yard on a C6 and topping the church at the top of the street by several hundred feet. It eventually landed in a gutter in the two-family at the top of the street, then was destroyed by a storm that moved in before we could get Grandpa's Bell ladder out. This one on a B6-4 topped out at 523' after boosting to my right and heading out to the highway. The chute I chose was a very vintage Estes orange and white chute with most of the center cut out, and came out of one of my eBay rescues. The Wizard drifted back toward me for what seemed like forever and eventually landed just behind me about 20 feet from the pad. Impressive.
If nothing else, the day got off to a great start. Flight #2 would be the FRW Goony Vector G. I flew this fairly recently, but since that flight I made the switch to fleet colors, so I wanted to get it documented.
Unfortunately, the fluorescent orange paint doesn't pop on camera like it does in person. It's really quite bright. Whatever the case, the Vector G left the pad leaning slightly away from me and flew to 331', popping the chute just as upward motion slowed. Recovery path was also relatively straight, but it came down on the edge of the parking lot and the nose cone hit my car. This is why I can't have nice things.
The Estes Solar Probe is one of the rockets crushed many years ago during the William Incident where a neighbor found me flying at B6-4 Field and came down to have a look. He wanted to know if he could come down and help out, so I told him to ask his Mom. Mom dutifully showed up, which was a great relief to me. After pushing the button for a couple of flights, William decided that he wanted to recover some for me. He took off as soon as the chute popped on his chosen rocket, and stepped straight into the tote that I'd used to bring the rockets to the field. Mom was mortified. William was afraid. I was laughing so hard that I was doubled over. Mom wanted to pay for the damage. William couldn't stop apologizing. I told them that it was all a part of small field flying. The damage became evident at home. He'd damaged several birds badly enough that they'd need to be rebuilt, the Solar Probe being one of them. I replaced the fragmented fin and straightened out the body tube as well as I could. A couple of weeks ago I did the masking and was lucky enough to find the same red paint in my drawer. (Likely the same can.) You really have to look close to see the damage.
I should mention that this one wasn't a clone. It was an original that I picked up from Penn Valley Hobbies back in 2009. A late night shopping spree in the eBay store. Man, I miss those days. This would be a B6-4 flight. Dead straight off the pad to 318' and a perfect recovery on the overly-reefed chute. Landed just to my left and all the repairs held up.
By flight #4, the FRW Satellite Regent, the flies had discovered my presence. Sweat was running off me in streams, but I can handle that. The flies were another matter entirely. I was starting to wish I had a tail. The Satellite Regent, a Custom Satellite Drone that I made an error on while paying more attention to a ball game, hasn't been a frequent flyer, mostly because it never got past the "body in white" construction phase. Last week I noticed it sitting on the floor in really old primer and decided to give it the fleet paint job. I had some trouble with the ring fin holding paint but eventually got it to look acceptable. From a distance.
The photo doesn't do it justice. Believe me, this thing glows in the tote. This would be a B6-4 flight with the aforementioned vintage chute. Dead straight to 327', then a leisurely recovery just to my left. Pretty decent for a reclaimed screw up/
Orange, white and black ruled the day, and the next rocket on the pad was right in step with the trend, the Semroc Tau Zero. This was Jay Goemmer's project from the start to finish back when Carl still roamed the earth. Mine was actually a pre-production prototype, sent to me to see if it was idiot proof. Until today it was. (To be fair, the failure likely had more to do with brittle, 20 year old glue than anything.)
The A8-3 flight was as expected, quick off the pad to 289' and a fairly straight flight path. It tipped to the left at apogee and fired the ejection charge almost immediately. From that point it became obvious that there was an issue as the body came straight down into left field and the nose cone, parachute and shock cord hung in the heavy air. I followed the body to the ground, then had trouble picking up the chute again. It had fallen fast than expected and was already below the trees. The nose cone was my big worry as I'm not sure eRockets still stocks it, but when I located it, it was obviously not in danger of drifting into the woods. Postmortem showed the Kevlar had unknotted itself and slipped away from the engine block, a fairly easy fix.
Back when every Hobby Lobby trip meant that I would come home with an Estes Mini Max, I first contented myself with building an army of Maxi in every color of the paint drawer. Then I was struck with inspiration and realized that there was a sadly neglected variant out there that was possible by just scavenging a piece of BT-50 from the parts bin. Thus was born the Mini Big Red Max.
Did I do a terrible job of setting this shot, or what? In my defense I was doing serious battle with flies that seemed to think my calf and ankles were prime cuts. I had decided that it would be a ten flight day, biting flies or heatstroke bedamned. This would be my only mini-engine flight of the day, an A3-4. At B6-4 Field this would have been a 1/2A3-4 flight and I'm liking the upgrade. It was a fairly uneventful flight, a quick, straight jaunt to 262', then an equally quick streamer recovery that landed within ten feet of where I stood. The hard landing has me thinking that this would be better served with a parachute on future flights. Something small and mostly spill hole.
Yeah, there had to be a Goony and you knew it. In the Parthenon of Goons, the Star Snoop, Missile Toe and Sky Shriek were my favorites, with the Galaxy Guppy, Zoom Broom and Cloudhopper a tier down. The only original I ever had was a Cloudhopper, bought off of a clearance table in front of a Kay Bee Toy & Hobby at a mall in Lexington, KY. Today I chose the Sky Shriek.
When I first started cloning the Goons, I had an internal conflict about the 13mm vs. 18mm power source. I had convinced myself that it would be better to upgrade to 18mm, but I had failed to take into account the reduction in space for a recovery system. I solved this by cutting away a lot of the nose cone base and packing the chute in there. Turns out I could have just stayed with 13mm power, kept the recovery system as is and had pretty much the same performance. I mean, does a Goony really work as an altitude record bird? Whatever the case, this would be an A8-3 flight, a quick flight to 237' with an equally quick recovery to within twenty feet of where I stood. Goony in a stovepipe.
I have an interesting history with the Estes Red Dawg. In my early QUARK days, our president brought one to my first VOA launch. It experienced a CATO as it left the pad, and dropped to the ground in front of me, still aflame. Mark screamed "STEP ON IT!" I just stood there and watched it burn. He came over and applied the boot, then yelled at me for not stomping the conflagration. My excuse was that I don't step on another man's rocket. "Yeah, I get that," was his reply.
I'm going to get out in front of this right now. No, I would not have to stomp my Dawg on this flight. This would be a B6-4 flight, like most on the day. In this case, I would likely have been better off with a B6-6. The Dawg left the pad heading slightly right and away from me and topped out at 383' while still moving up. There was nothing initially from the parachute, and it fell almost 100' before the chute filled. From that point it was a typical recovery and landed across the parking lot just off the gravel.
Flight #9 would be the Quest Harpoon AGM on a B6-4. I picked this up as an afterthought a decade ago and built it on one of those no flying weekends that we all suffer through. To my surprise, it was a great build and to my greater surprise, it really looked great when finished. This would only be flight #3 for it in the decade plus I've owned it, but that was due more to the sheer volume of rockets in my fleet than anything else.
I didn't spare the paint on the 'Poon, so it's a bit on the piggy side. The B6-4 flight left the pad fairly slowly and flew straight to 283'. It tipped to the left at apogee and ejected as it was sideways, then fell a good distance before the chute filled. It was the same reefed Estes chute that handled the bulk of my recoveries on the day and it brought things back to the field just to my left.
By this time the flies had sounded the alarm to the rest of the brigade that there was good eatin' in The Grove. I thought about calling things at nine flights, but ten was what I had decided on earlier, so I cast an eye to my tote for something quick and easy.
Does it get quicker or easier than an Estes Alpha IV?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still nursing a grudge against the previous owners of Estes for not producing a 50th anniversary kit of some kind. Inexcusable. The 60th anniversary Alpha IV was along the lines of what I'd expect, maybe in gold. This isn't a frequent flier, this being just the second flight. The A8-3 flight was a quick pop-up to 243' and a perfect corkscrew recovery. It landed ten feet away from where I had the rest of the victims lined up for the post launch photo. Boffo.
Much to the chagrin of the flies, I had the pad struck and heading for the trunk of my car within a minute. I was thinking about an iced tea and some air conditioning, stat. The ten launches give me 140 on the year, a respectable total considering that the launch window for 2026 didn't open until May. This puts me into striking range of my top five flying seasons ever. My most ever was in 2020 when I had 242 flights. I did a lot of socially distant flying at B6-4 Field, not entirely different from what I'm now doing in The Grove. I don't see myself managing 102 more flights in 2026, but just normal numbers should make this year my second most ever. 20 flight days could be the norm, especially after the seasons change and the biting bugs return to hell. My list of "gotta fly" birds is over 100, so there should be no shortage of victims.
