July 2, 2016 Launch report
Hot, hot, hot. Did I mention that it was hot?
Thank heaven for the tents!
In spite of the
heat, we had a nice turn out with some new faces and some
very nice flights. Because of the wind, we set up the range
further south on the field, which helped keep a couple of
rockets on the right side of the road later in the day.
Gene Titus had a
successful NAR L1 cert attempt flying a LOC Cyclotron on an
AT H130. And Gordon Bain was successful on his TRA L2 cert
attempt flying his Nike-Stretch (a modified MadCow
Nike-Smoke) on an AT J425. Congratulations to both of them!
Dan DeHart and
Chris Sumpter came up from the Houston area and flew a
couple of large rockets. Chris flew his LOC EZI-65 on a CTI
K570, and Dan flew a complex profile with his LOC Magnum,
launching it on an AT K700 and then air-starting two I200's
after a coasting for a bit. It's always cool to hear the
sound of those motors when they start way up in the air.
Other
out-of-towners were Allan Howard from Kerrville, Ken Carey
from Giddings, and Bill Cook from San Antonio. There were
probably some other folks from out of town, too, but my
memory isn't what it once was.
James Duffy was
there to test a boilerplate of his Little Joe that he'll be
taking to the FAI competition next month. He decided to
tempt fate by clustering two F42's and four A10's for
effects, but he only got one of the F's to ignite, which led
to the sort of flight profile you might expect. Lesson
learned, and I think he intends to switch to a central 29mm
motor instead of the two 24mm F's. There were also a couple
of Estes Little Joe's and an Estes Saturn V.
Jim Jarvis broke
out an old favorite -- his heavily customized Big Daddy --
and flew it on a CTI I100 with a nice 6+ second burn time.
Nobody really saw it until it was almost down, but Jim had
his tracker in it and was able to find the tree it landed in
down in the trailer park. His Jolly Logic Chute Release case
was snapped open and the innards were missing, and that
probably had a lot to do with the long recovery. As far as I
know, that was the only flight out of several where the
Jolly Logic Chute Release gadget didn't work perfectly, and
that one may just have been bad luck banging against the
airframe at separation.
Looking forward
to seeing everybody again in August!
Mark Scheevel
Motor stats:
| By impulse | By manufacturer | Flights | ||||
| 1/8A | 0 | Aerotech | 16 | 46 | ||
| 1/4A | 0 | Apogee | 0 | |||
| �A | 0 | AMW | 0 | |||
| A | 5 | CTI | 5 | |||
| B | 5 | Estes | 31 | |||
| C | 8 | Loki | 0 | |||
| D | 7 | Quest | 0 | |||
| E | 5 | RoadRunner | 0 | |||
| F | 6 | EX | 0 | |||
| G | 4 | Total | 52 | |||
| H | 2 | |||||
| I | 5 | |||||
| J | 3 | |||||
| K | 2 | |||||
| L | 0 | |||||
| M | 0 | |||||
| N | 0 | |||||
| Total | 52 | |||||
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Posted by: Mark Scheevel <[email protected]>