Mother Nature has not been the kindest as of recent. This launch was a rescheduling of the weekend prior due to rain, and we didn’t get much better weather this weekend either. Saturday yielded ~18mph constant winds, but Sunday was sunny and fairly calm. Here is the motor table summary for this past weekend’s activities.
| Motor | Saturday | Sunday | Total |
| A | | ||
| B | | ||
| C | 3 | 3 | |
| D | 2 | 2 | |
| E | 2 | 2 | |
| F | | ||
| G | | | |
| H | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| I | 1 | | 1 |
| J | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| K | 1 | 1 | |
| L | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| M | | ||
| N | | | |
| O | | | |
| Total | 4 | 13 | 17 |
IMPORTANT – before I get into the report, I have some bad news unfortunately. One of the farmers has made it crystal clear that he doesn’t want any vehicles on the field, AT ALL. I know we have been allowing tenured club members to drive on the farm roads ever since the big issue we had a couple years ago, but that will not be happening at all for the foreseeable future. EVERYONE will now have to travel by foot to get their rockets back. Please respect this as it’s a zero tolerance rule moving forward.
As stated before, Saturday was pushing the limits as far as the Tripoli rules allow regarding the winds, and there was a ton of sitting around talking rocketry instead of flying. This report will be relatively short simply because there wasn’t a whole lot of activity!
We had some hardcore regulars that were willing to make the trek to retrieve their rockets, and they weren’t going to let the wind keep them from flying. Mike Nay was the guinea pig on Saturday with his rocket named Mini Demon, which took a CTI H-255WT. He set the main parachute deployment altitude to 300′ to try and keep it close, but it still drifted quite a ways. Joe Hill decided to put an Aerotech I-211W in his 3″ rocket called Pink Dog, which only took it to 2400′. Joe’s rocket, even with dual deploy, drifted farther than it went up. Lexi Tucker, who is newly level 2 certified, put up the same rocket that she certified with called Oliver White on an Aerotech J-275W. Lexi’s rocket went up almost 5,000ft, but thankfully the weathercocking brought her rocket right back, and Oliver White laid down closer than every other rocket flown on Saturday. Jealous!! The final flight of the day was by NC A&T. They brought out a 12′ long, 5.5″ rocket that weighed in at 60lbs. They decided to shove the very high thrust Aerotech L-2200G in it, which turned in roughly 3500′ of altitude with a nominal recovery.
Sunday was almost a complete 180 as far as the weather, and we got many more flights in. Jim Livingston started the day off with one of my favorite research propellants – Jim Scarpine Tribute Blue #4b. For those of you who have not witnessed JSTB#4b before, it’s basically a clone of Aerotech’s Blue Thunder propellant. Jim had mixed up a four grain, 76mm configuration which was designated an L-1500. Jim threw this motor in his 5.5″ Carbon High rocket, and it turned in an absolutely text book flight. While we’re on the subject of research flights, Alan Whitmore had two picture perfect flights on Sunday. First up was Alan’s Bertrand Brindley’s Beta which took a 54mm 2 grain JSTB#4C motor. I’m guessing this was about a 800Ns J-600ish, and if I remember, he started this motor at a Kn of about 190 or so. Alan later flew his Extended Irene on a six grain 29mm H motor filled with AlFeO propellant. He really ramped up the Kn in the motor, so it went out of sight pretty quickly. Richard Powers has been consistently joining us for a couple years now, and always keeps the low power pads busy. It’s always great seeing Richard, and am glad he got back into the hobby after so many years of not flying. Joe Hill put up a new 4″ rocket that he calls The Man with Fire on His Face on an Aerotech L-1150R to 11,000ft.
We had one successful certification this weekend. John Meredith joined us from Greenville with his 3″ Loc Precision ‘Iris’ in an attempt to become Level 2 certified with the TRA. John clearly knows what he’s doing because he had an absolutely beautiful flight. John’s Iris went for a super fast flight on an Aerotech single use J-435WS, and came back home unscathed. Congratulations are in store for John! Great job.
We’ve got a launch coming up this weekend (3/18-3/19), so come join us if you can!
Joe Hill
Prefect, Tripoli East NC
