Hedging my bets - Getting in a December launch while the weather is being cooperative, 12-4-21

 I've been here before.  Back in the summer I passed on a perfect launch day in June, then suffered through rain outs and alternate plans to find myself at the end of the month without a flight.  I wound up making one launch on a miserable day just to put the month in the books.  No way I was going to take a chance at trying to get a flight in when the field was under two inches of water with sleet adding to the misery, so I packed my box and headed for B6-4 Field.

I took a little long to choose the birds, so I found the sun low on the horizon when I arrived at the field.  (This is my 59th daylight savings time.  You'd think I'd keep things like this in mind.)  First flight was a rarity, a completely painted bird on its first flight, the Semroc My Boid.  I picked a few of these up to keep in my range box as spectator give-aways, but the odd nose cone shape on one got the best of me and I built it one day when I was bored.

I'm now jaded to the point that stuff like this doesn't surprise me.  Yeah, that's not exactly true.  My wipers on delay surprise me every time.  The doorbell causes me to dive under furniture.  And dog farts?  I don't even want to talk about dog farts.  (Well, other than to laugh about them.)  Truth is, my B6-4 Field photo capture habits have become so ingrained that I try to keep the camera focused on the pad until well after the rocket has left.  This one kinda stuck around.

I guess that's a flight.  If nothing else, then at least an expended motor casing.  I had another 1/2A3-2T motor rattling around the box, so I earmarked that one for another Boid flight later in the afternoon.

The next flyer came about one day last week when I found all the parts on my desk and decided to turn them into something flyable.  Everything had been earmarked for another project at one time or another, but those projects fall through for some reason.  Separately they were just part of the general mish-mash of my computer loft desk.  Together they became the FRW Time Warp.

The flight would be on an A8-3, which would turn out to be a perfect first flight motor.  I don't scratch build a lot, but most of the time it's with an eye toward B6-4 Field performance.  The Time Warp left the pad and boosted straight up and out somewhat, then recovered out behind shortstop.  Now I just have to think up a paint scheme.  Frank N Furter, anyone?

Flight #3 would be my last first timer, an Estes Thor-Agena B that had its roots in a number of kits.  The fin can was initially a part of an Estes Beta Launch Vehicle, and since it was clear, I immediately set it aside for use on a scale clone.  (The Beta Launch Vehicle got a fin can from a currently available Estes Freefall kit and just missed being brought to the field today as another first time flyer.)  The rest of the Thor-Agena B came from eRockets.

Eh, I clearly didn't think this one out well.  I remember thinking that this might be a job for the mighty B6-4, but for some reason I grabbed an A8-3.  This became evident as soon as it struggled off the pad and clawed its way to the 100' mark.  It tipped over and began falling sideways back toward B6-4 Field as the tracking smoke trailed.  Disaster loomed, but thirty feet from disaster the ejection charge fired, the chute filled, and the cheeks unclenched.  Impact was anything but gentle, but the rocket survived, especially the clear fin can.

The Curvilinear was up next, and it was the rocket that had flown most recently, back in 2019.  I grandfathered it in because the first flight was in primer, while this one would be in full warpaint.  This is another rocket that's perfect for B6-4 Field, and could conceivably be considered a Goony.

 This will now and forever fly here on A10 and A3 motors.  Even on the big As, this doesn't come close to overflying my field.  This flight would be on an A10-3T and it left the pad heading straight and somewhat out over the field.  It climbed to 200' before firing the chute quickly and bringing things back safely.  Cheap thrills.

The Astron Stinger was up next.  This rocket has led an anything but charmed existence.  The nose cone was from a lot of old balsa cones I won on a late night eBay Buy It Now.  It was painted and ready to go, so I cut the fins one night before work, then took it in to work on it during lunch.  On the trip home in the morning the ready-for-primer Stinger fell from the back seat to the floor and broke a fin.  I cut and attached a new fin and flew it at B6-4 Field after NARAM in 2013.  This happened to be the day that I was joined by nine-year-old William.  William had watched the Stinger fly from the hill and was very impressed.  He and his Mom came down to watch a few flights and William, overcome with excitement over one particular flight, charged out to recover it and ran directly over the box that I was transporting my rockets in that day.  Damage was pretty awful, with the bulk of rockets in the box suffering a crushed fin or tube.  The Stinger broke a fin.  During my Covid quarantine earlier this year I finally got around to cutting a new fin for it.  I got it painted and decaled and was looking forward to flying it at some point during 2021.  It fell off of the piano bench and broke a fin.

You can see the break in the fin in this picture.  I was going to replace the fin after the flight, but that's no necessary now.  If I'd bothered to read my notes on the 2013 flight I'd have known that an A8-3 really got the Stinger up there.  I estimated 400' back then, which wouldn't have normally been a problem.  For this flight, I opted for a chute to protect the previously broken fin.  This would be a problem. 

The flight was high and straight.  400' would be a decent guess and in the fading light the flame was impressive.  At ejection, the powdered Semroc chute performed perfectly.  This was when I realized my mistake.  It immediately became obvious that the Stinger was not going to drop straight back to the field like I'd hoped.  It began floating south on the breeze.  At first I thought it would land on the school roof, then on the playground, but it cleared both by 100' or more.  I got a nostalgic twinge watching it float away as it reminded me of the first flight I made with the Jet Freak a few years back.  The recovery path was identical.  So were the results.

Another potential high flyer was next, an Estes Black Brant III, but with it not being a minimum diameter rocket, I felt like using a chute wasn't going to wind up with me watching the rocket drift into the sunset.  This was a clone I built using the nose cone from a CATOd Estes Skywriter and decals from Excelsior.

Turns out I was right about it not floating away.  It never floated at all.  The flight was as expected, fairly high and dead straight to around 300'.  This A8-3 ejection charge sounded like someone clearing their throat and wasn't quite enough to do much more than get the shoulder of the nose cone past the top of the body tube.  Eventually the whole recovery system pulled loose, but the chute never opened.  The whole mess recovered sideways and crashed to the ground to the left of the pad.  I was expecting the worst, but the fin that hit first buried itself in the soft, moist ground.  Mmmm.  Moist.

The Semroc Swift would fly next, for the first time since 2015.  Having learned my lesson with the Astron Stinger, I flew this one with streamer recovery on an A8-3.  This rocket has been along to many launches in the six years since it last flew, and the fins are showing a lot of hangar rash.  It's in dire need of a repaint, which is fine because the black nose cone and black cherry fin can don't have near enough contrast.

Not sure why this one has flown so infrequently, especially at B6-4 Field.  As an A8-3 streamer bird it's pretty much made for small fields like this one.  The flight was perfect, straight off the pad to 300' with ejection just before forward motion stopped.  It streamed back to the field and landed just out in front of the pad in the same spot as the next three rockets would land.

Next flight would be ugly.  In every way.  The Centuri Python Fighter was a Centuri product built with Estes parts in the last days before Damon made them one in the same.  This version was an original that came in an eBay lot that I've always planned to strip down and rebuild.  It shows definite signs of being built by a kid, from the lack of sanding on the fins to the runny paint and crooked decals.

For the second time in the day, the ejection charge played the bad guy, and not in the way you'd expect.  The flight topped out around 200', then what sounded like a half-hearted ejection charge barely got the chute out and everything got tangled in the fins.  The whole mess came to earth with a thud, surprisingly without damage.  From there it went straight to the paint booth.

The MPC/Round 2 Red Giant would be my big motor rocket of the day.  It's easy to fly ARTF rocket like this up at B6-4 Field because I don't care if I lose them.  It's a McRocket, picked up on the cheap and flown only on the occasion when I'm trying to get everything I have some flight time.

It's not a bad rocket, but there isn't anything to really get excited about.  It's a very generic sci-fi design that can also be had with cartoon characters, either KISS or Looney Tunes.  (Not that there's much difference between the two except that the Looney Tune songs are better.)  Decent flight on the B6-4 to 300', then a recovery in the same spot as the Swift and Python Fighter.  Next flight will be on a C6-5, just to see if I can.

Last flight on the day would be a redemption flight for the Semroc My Boid.

This was more along the lines of what I was hoping for, topping out at 250' after a largely straight flight.  Streamer recovery brought it down in the exact spot that three of the previous four landed in.  Apparently I'm a spot-landing prodigy.

 

That doesn't wrap up 2021 for me.  We have a club launch in the beans this weekend and I have vacation leading up to it.  This should give me a chance to get several rockets completely dressed before their first flight, the D.O,M. Argus II and my upscale FSI Voyager being the two that I'm concentrating on.  Temps in the 60's, so it's likely to be a matter of how much mud I can stand. 

 

Back to the bean field, WSR launch, 11-6-21

October was a dud, not just for me, but also for WSR, with lousy weather plaguing us through the whole month.  Things got so bad that I wound up sneaking up to B6-4 Field for a low and slow launch, just to continue to be able to lay claim to flying in every month of 2021.  After our launch was nixed on the 30th, I doubt that anyone thought November would give us much to work with, but we dutifully bought motors and prepped just in case we got a usable launch window.

 I don't think any of us saw this coming.  For the second straight year we've been blessed with an almost perfect day to fly rockets in the corn/beans in November.  Last year we had a day when temps were around 70 all day, but with the typical Central Ohio cornfield breeze.  This year the temps were a tad lower, but the wind was almost non-existent, and the crowds showed up.  Parking stretched back to the curve of the field.  Kids chucked dirt clods.  It was almost a park-like setting.  Who do I see about making this permanent?

I brought a conservative mix with me for this launch, a lot of unflown birds and some that just haven't flown for a decade or so, and a couple that have been repaired since their last flight.  Not sure at what point in the day I made the decision, but somewhere along the line it became apparent that I was going to fly all first-timers, starting with the Estes S.D.I. Satellite.

This bird has been a long time coming for me.  I actually acquired the nose cone for this bird in an Estes Designer's Special back in 2001.  When I was a kid, the Designer's Special was a cool way to buy a lot of tubes and cones that could be used to create a bunch of old catalog birds.  I made the mistake of thinking it was still like that, only to find that in the years since I was last active in the hobby, the Designer's Special had become a disappointing mish-mash of whatever junk needed to be swept out of the storage bins at Estes.  I didn't mind the Greyhawk nose cone so much, but I kind of felt like this was stretching calling the S.D.I. Satellite stack a nose cone.  Twenty years on my curiosity got the better of me, and we know what happened to the cat.

I read over a bunch of reviews and flight logs at rocketreviews.com and all of them stressed the importance of using a C6-3 ONLY for this.  I remember thinking that it might benefit me to try it on a C5-3, but that thought never made it past the doors at work.  On Friday night I sprayed a fancy coat of white primer on the rocket, then grabbed a C6-3 on Saturday morning.  Big mistake.

The C6-3 struggled to get this tub off the pad.  It actually appeared to give up for a moment, which turned the tub to the right over the creek.  From there it was clearly fighting as it climbed out to the 300' mark.  It tipped over, fired the ejection charge, and an audible "THUNK" was heard on the ground.  The shock cord and parachute fouled on the rear fins and the whole mess landed in the beans on the other side of the creek with a splat, the sort of flight not seen in Cedarville since the forgettable R2Doo-Doo disaster of 2018.  

 Damage was fairly extreme, borderline broom and dustpan recovery.  Two of the rear fins detached, as did one of the tubes.  Another tube was crushed.  The idea of finding a dumpster had some definite appeal, but I'm determined to see the flight on a C5-3.  Plus the fact that I've already printed off the decals.  To be honest, the next flight might occur at B6-4 Field.  At least there my shame will be private.

Since the first flight was a steaming pile, I wanted to taste success on the second flight, so I chose the Semroc Magnum Sprint on a D12-5.  This bird was another one that had been coming to the field for multiple launches, so I was more than ready to see it fly.

I built this one stock, but I gave serious thought to changing out the D12 motor mount for an E12 mount.  I chose the D12 mount because the original Centuri Magnum birds were built with it in mind.  I've seen reviews that talked about using an 18mm adapter for this rocket, and I can see it being a possible B6-4 flight, but on a day like this I had no intention of flying with anything but a D12-5.  The flight was very straight, just slightly off to the left to about 800'.  

This would have been a perfect flight, but the landing was rough and the body bounced noticeably on impact.  Not surprisingly, I found a fin cracked and gouged, not much more than normal flight, but damaged still.  0 for 2 to start on what looked to be a perfect day to fly.  I needed a palate cleanser.

So, I chose a complicated cluster for my next flight.  I've built a Max or two over the years, 30 to be precise.  (I counted.  27 are in flight shape and three are pishing daisies like the Norwegian Blue, two by tree and one by CATO.)  I picked up another StickerShock decal set, Der Vader Max in this case.  Most of my Maxes have something unique about them, so I decided that this one would be a cluster.  

Definitely a candidate for flight of the day.  Arrow straight to 1000' or so feet with a rimshot ejection charge.  Pretty cool.  Recovery was deeper in the beans as it's a long trip down from that height and there was some breeze to deal with.  Finally on the board with my first undamaged bird of the day.

For flight #4, I'd stick with the Max theme.  With the Mini Max unfortunately OOP, I was forced to find another creative outlet for my Max fetish.  (Ooh, Der Fetish Max!  Gonna have to think about this one.)  I downsized a set of regular DRM decals to the approximate size of the Mini Max and printed them on white decal paper so that the white bits would show clearly.  Unfortunately, this would have meant a lot of tiny detail cutting which my eyes are no longer certified for, so Der Ghost Max it was!

I've built Mini Maxes with 13mm, 18mm and 24mm motor mounts, so I decided that the difference here would be limited to the paint.  It also helped make the trimming of decals a no brainer, which I'm well qualified for.  First flight for this one would be an A10-3T.  The flight was as you'd expect it to be in these conditions, a nice, straight shot to 300' or so followed by a streamer recovery.  It landed about 100' from the pad.  Now if I could just figure out how to make a GHOST MAX decal in that font......

 After two straight successful flights and conditions continuing to be stellar, I decided to take a chance with my TLP Exocet MM.40, one of the last TLP birds I was able to pick up before Hobbylinc ran out of stock.  Construction took FOREVER, but not because of anything TLP did.  My interest waxed and waned over the course of the project, but it all came together when I got stuck at home for Covid quarantine after an office mate came down with the virus.

Loaded with a pair of E12-6s and sporting more metal than bumper from a '52 Buick, I was fairly sure I had the balancing act conquered, and the conditions were never going to be better.  I was expecting a slow liftoff and I hoped the Exocet would get up to speed without getting hit with a rogue breeze, but there was none of that.  It left the pad quickly, WAY faster than I'd been expecting.  The flight was extremely straight and quite a bit higher than I'd expected.  I'd been worried about the six second delay, but it appeared to be a good choice as there were two distinct ejection charges heard in quick succession.  Recovery was handled by an 18" yellow nylon chute whose origins are a mystery.  It was in my car when I got home from a launch in the spring, the snap swivel bent and useless.  Recovery was inspiring as the Exocet hung straight down from the chute, slowly drifting back toward the beans.  I took pictures, none of which came out.  A video would have been better, but I was only thinking at half speed.  It touched down softly and the whole thing stretched itself out in the field in a straight line.  Very cool flight.  Now I'm pumped to get it painted.

When Estes reintroduced the name "Solar Warrior" on a larger, more powerful rocket, I wasn't thrilled.  It wasn't because of the design.  I just don't care for Estes reusing rocket names.  The new design was a sharp bird on its own, and it deserved to be known by a unique name.  That's all I'll say about that.  No, it isn't.  My first Solar Warrior v.2 was built just after it was released, but perished in an afternoon avalanche of poor decisions and lousy luck back in the spring of 2013.  I remember thinking that I'd build another one as I watched the first one drift away, but it wasn't until my brother in law bought me one during one of the Estes clearance sales that I had the chance.

I'd built my first version of the Solar Warrior to fly on E motors, so this one got the same treatment.  I still have most of the decals from the first one, so I made sure to use all of them on this one just in case it was also a one and done bird.  The flight wasn't as textbook as I'd hoped.  Despite the almost complete lack of breeze, the Solar Warrior kinked right off the pad and headed for the opposite side of the creek.  No skywriting, but the rocket topped out a lot lower than I thought it would.  I'm thinking that I might have to add a touch of nose weight before the next flight to compensate for the added weight in the read end from the E motor.  The flight wound up on the right (wrong) side of the creek, and was recovered by a kind soul that I never got to thank.  I found it on the ground next to one of the tables on the flight line.

At this point I was running out of time, so something low level was in order.  Back in 1994, the rocket that got me reinterested in the hobby was an Estes Ninja that I found in a hobby shop in Arlington, TX that was in the middle of a going out of business sale.  I got the Ninja and a pack of motors for a couple of bucks, figuring I could entertain the kids with a launch at some point during the week.  The original served its purpose, but got crushed by shifting luggage on the trip home.  All I had left was the decal.  After I got serious about flying in 2001, I bought the second gen Ninja, but this was the first time I built and painted one of the first gen birds in all black.

I had originally planned to fly the Ninja on an A10, but forgot that I switched it out for a 1/2A when I thought about flying it at B6-4 Field.  The flight was pretty much what you'd expect in the conditions we were flying under, leaving the rod heading slightly left and recovering a short walk into the beans after a perfect streamer recovery.  This should probably be flown with a small chute in the future as I built it with the fiber fins and not basswood like I did the earlier one.

It didn't occur to me until just now, but my final two flights on this day had something of a connection from 1994.  After I bought my Ninja that day, my brother in law came home from work and found me building it at the kitchen table.  He asked where it came from and I told him.  "Let's go!" was his answer.  He picked up a couple of kits and motors and our wives went back later to pick up stuff for us for Christmas.  I got a Super Vega and Greyhawk, both of which have flown multiple times over the years, and the Hornet, which I finally finished 27 years later.

My last flight of the day would be on a C6-5 and followed the flightpath of the Ninja as it left the pad.  It looked great as it was heading up, but at ejection there seemed to be an issue.  I thought I heard the sound of a collision, which to me meant a possible nose cone snapping back.  At the same time we saw something falling straight down while the rocket itself rode the chute down to the beans.  I was expecting to find a missing fin, after all, there are 10 of them, but it was apparently just the dog barf falling.  Everything was intact when I got to the landing site.

At this point it was just past 4:30.  The waiver closed at 5:00, at which time everyone was going for dinner before starting the night launch.  I still had one first flight bird in the box, my Semroc My Boid, but my feet were begging for Aleve and not to be walking through the beans again.  I listened to my feet.  At best I get home before dark.  At worst I have a leadoff flight ready to go for this weekend.