Launch Report, Butner, June 22, 2019

Our first summer launch of 2019 in Butner was held on June 22, 2019. Weather was great. Partly cloudy, around 80 degrees, not too humid, little wind. We will probably be back to 95 degrees and high humidity for the rest of the launches this summer.

I think we may have broken a record for number of flights at a Butner launch with 71! Might even be a record for Bayboro. Alan Whitmore can verify. The large number of flights was due to a large group of Cub Scouts (Pack 582 from Whispering Pines).

I apologize for the equipment failures we had. I tested everything the day before, but we had problems with the Public Address system (a bad 12V power cord) and one of the launch pad control boxes (probably a bad solder joint on the single sided prototype circuit board). I’ll get the problem fixed by the next launch. Still, we had five pads working and my outdoor voice did not fail me.

Here is the usual summary of flights by motor size

The Cub Scouts flew a lot of A-C range rockets about the size of Alphas. There were only a couple of non-optimal flights. Construction quality was higher than usual for beginners!

We only had one cluster flight this month. John Allman flew a Semroc Defender on three A motors. All lit.

There were 2 two-stage flights. Eric Noguchi flew a Squirrelworks Spool staging a D12-0 to another D12-0. The bottom half of the spool fell off as the booster while the upper spool plate and? tube flew on the sustainer motor. The fast growing Alan Harrell flew the aging CowCow on a C6/B6 combination. His grandpa said they have about 20 flights on that rocket.

Six glider flights occurred. Joe Guarascio? flew a Shuttle Express on a B4-2. John Allman had two nicely finished Orbital Transports. One flew with a C6-3, the larger one with a D12-5 . Eric Noguchi flew his Kestrel Canard, Dragonfly Quad Wing and Sigma Canard.

Mark Hartmann and Joe Hill flew the two G motors, both with dual deploy. Mark flew his Public Missiles PitBull with a G77 and a chute-release. Joe used a G74 in his Short Stick. Unfortunately it ended up in the trees to the south. As did Jimmy Blackley’s Cherokee D with an F32 towards the end of the day.

Joe Guarascio flew a Saturn V on the recommended D12-3. I doubt it made it to 100 feet, but recovery was fine. It needs a bigger motor. He also had a Falcon 9 kit he flew twice on a D12 and an E9. He got lucky and the E9 did not CATO.

John Allman flew a nice Little Joe II with an F12 that ended up in the trees near the field entrance, but he was able to get it down with my carbon fiber pole after the launch.

Gage Angarrow gets Alan Whitmore’s best name rocket award with his Orange U Happy scratch built rocket that flew on a C6-5. Runner up would have to be Chloe-ann Detwiler’s Alpha named Poptart Turtle.

We found one lost rocket in the field. It looks like one of the Cub Scout rockets. E-mail me to make arrangements to pick it up if it is yours.

Many thanks to David Fitch and Joe Hill for helping at the RSO desk. Their help was invaluable during the rush of Cub Scouts. If we have another launch with a big crowd we will set up a couple of queues for RSO check and waiting for launch in order to organize the fliers, just like at big launches.

Be sure and join us for a launch on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 2019.

Dave Morey

dave@morey.com