A huge thank-you to Dave Morey and Jim Livingston who got the launch started on Saturday while I was getting myself together after a week of traveling. Jim spent a lot of time with the USLI team from North Carolina State University on Saturday and helped them out a lot. I?ll have more to say about that project later. The weather was fabulous (for a February) and contributed to the good turnout. Let?s have a look at the motor use summary and talk more about individual flights after that.
|
Motor |
Sat |
Sun |
Total |
|
B |
4 |
? |
4 |
|
C |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
D |
3 |
? |
3 |
|
E |
2 |
? |
2 |
|
F |
2 |
4 |
6 |
|
G |
6 |
2 |
8 |
|
H |
? |
1 |
1 |
|
I |
5 |
3 |
8 |
|
J |
2 |
1 |
3 |
|
K |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
L |
? |
1 |
1 |
|
M |
? | ? |
0 |
|
N |
1 |
? |
1 |
| ? |
29 |
12 |
41 |
The one oddity about this month was the almost complete lack of children. If Bill Boykin had not made the trip and brought his grandson Matt Raymond IV, there would have been no children on site at all on Saturday, a most unusual situation.
A variety of the regular adults did show up and Saturday saw flights by [in addition to Dave and Jim] Mike and Tom Collier, Andrew Billin, Kevin Murray, Paul Hoetges, and Craig Anfinsen. A close observer will note that there were no K motors flown on Saturday, and yet there is a K listed in the table. This is because I group clusters, airstarts and staged rockets under total installed impulse. Thus, Dave Morey attempted a flight of his 2-stage?Arreaux?on a J470G staging to a J180T. This adds up to 1446 total N.s, so I listed this flight in the K range. Unfortunately, the second stage did not light, but this caused no problems with recovery.
When I arrived at the field after lunch on Saturday, there were at least 30 cars on site, maybe more. I began to nurture the illusion that the rocketry hobby was really beginning to take off in Eastern North Carolina, until I drove into the parking area and found that we were hosting a qualifying flight for a rocket made by the North Carolina State University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) team, an endeavor sponsored by NASA . The team had put together a 14? 9″ long rocket that was 9″ in diameter and weighed 135 lbs. The flight was made on an Aerotech N2000. It was carrying 4 altimeters and a radio-controlled backup deployment device. There was an instrumentation package that carried devices for recording relative humidity, UV sensors, temperature, pressure, and solar irradiance. This package was kicked out sometime during the flight and was recovered under a separate parachute. This rocket had everything, everything except a name.
The up and down portions worked perfectly and I look forward to seeing the data from the electronics package. You can follow this project at?www.ncsurocketry.com.
We got started early on Sunday to avoid the winds, which usually pick up and get a lot stronger as the day goes on. By 10:00 AM Alan Whitmore had already flown his?GFI?on a 54mm K motor to the 5000 foot range, and Jim Livingston launched his newly refinished?LZ889?on a 76mm full L motor made from the very predictable CP5 formula to the region of 12,000 feet. The altimeters on this flight are not in agreement and performed very erratically, so we don?t really have an accurate altitude for that flight but it was out of sight for a long time.
Mark Yeager and Kevin Murray were also there on Sunday and flew a variety of rockets on commercial motors. Alan Whitmore flew the?Astro*Mollusk II?on a 3 grain 54m J motor to 5508? and Jim Livingston finished the day off with a flight of his?Mini Viper?on a C6. Unlike the previous flights of this rocket on B4?s this one was extremely unstable, due to the wind or the weight of the motor or both. The winds on Sunday were ?significant?. Not the worst we have seen at Bayboro, but we could not keep the lids on the launch controller boxes open because they would have been blown off the table. The direction of the winds was very stable, however, because every rocket that went out of sight was eventually recovered along the same line in a southeasterly direction.
It was another great weekend for rocketry in Eastern North Carolina, and I want to thank everybody who helped with set-up and tear-down, especially Dave Morey and everybody who showed up early on Saturday.
Alan Whitmore
Prefect, Tripoli East NC
