NC Rocketry

This was one of those classic half-good rocket weekends at Bayboro, when the weather really cooperates on one of the days,? and just can?t seem to get it together on the other day.? Saturday was warm and calm, but the clouds started out low, and just never seemed to clear all day long.? The local AWS was reporting 600 feet of ceiling at 9:30, when I arrived at the field, and only rose to 1200? by 5 o?clock.?? Sunday, in contrast, was a gem!? Still warm with calm winds, but the clouds broke up around 11:00, and we had clear blue skies all day.? How about a motor use summary:

The smallest motor flown all weekend was the F24 flown by Robbie Kirk on Saturday in his No-Name rocket.? Very unusual to have a whole weekend with no low-power motors flown.? The regulars were there on Saturday, looking around in the motor boxes for some combination that would keep them below the clouds.?? Most did.?? Dan Fritsch, Charles Long, Steve Polk, Mike Nay, and Sam DeLong were busy all day, but almost no-one else was there or flew anything.

Sunday was much better.? Certification flights are always the biggest events of the weekend, and we had two on Sunday.? Allan Rose re-certified level 2 with the Tripoli organization by scoring high on the written exam and then flying another nameless red and yellow rocket on a J350W for a perfect flight and recovery.? Welcome back to Allan!? Cade Brinkley waited all day Saturday for a break in the weather, and when none presented itself, he came back on Sunday for a perfect flight of his beautiful bronze and white rocket, also currently without a name, on the Loki M1650, a motor made with both blue and red flame propellant grains, and which is called Cocktail by the manufacturer.? The motor and the rocket both performed flawlessly for a successful TRA L3 certification.?? Cade has posted the on-board video from that flight at https://youtu.be/kYoej2Nj6vc????? .

Ralph Malone was in town from New York, and he had three good flights on Sunday, using his EZI-65, and a PML Sudden Rush.? Kurt Hesse, who is usually in the homemade motor group, flew his Shiny Diner on an I211W to good effect.? Charles Long and Sam DeLong were both back on Sunday for some much higher flying, and both were very successful.

The good weather on Sunday brought out the EX crowd in a big way.?? Jim Livingston and Alan Whitmore were up to their usual sort of EX activities, and Eric Fadely and Jeff Goldstein made the trip from SEVRA-land to fly with us again.?? Jeff had two flights that were right at the ragged edge.?? The first was a flight of his Swamp Thang on a motor made from one of the low-metals/high red iron oxide formulas that are famous for extremely fast burn rates.?? This was predicted to be something like an L3000, and it sure acted that way.?? Safe recovery after a high flight.?? The other flight was on the other side of the ragged edge:? This flight abused his rocket called Red Stick on a commercial Aerotech K2050 Super Thunder motor.? As soon as it got up to pressure, it blew both the front and back ends of the motor off and the propellant came spinning down, burning from both ends.? Very messy.? The opinion of the senior members of the club is that the ST propellant may not actually be ?ready for prime time?.?? I certainly would not fly it in any of my rockets.

Alan Whitmore, Prefect, Tripoli East NC

We got the 2017-2018 High-Power Season off to a great start in Bayboro this weekend, with a little bit of everything.? We had old friends show up, certification flights, lots of people pushing the envelope, and lots of successes.? The weather was great!!? Mild temperatures, clear skies, and moderate winds.? The only problems were the wind direction (towards the closest tree line) and the ground surface (freshly disced corn stubble, which tried to trip you up and turn your ankles at every step.).?? It was not just the old guys like myself who were having trouble with the terrain, I heard a number of the younger flyers complain about the footing.?? We need to keep in mind that September is one of those ?maybe/maybe not? months for our host.?? The corn has been mostly harvested, but the soybeans are still on the stalk.? A lot of foot traffic through the beans will just shake the pods off the stalk, resulting in loss of revenue.?? I know that there are many of you who have attempted to recover rockets in the middle of soybean fields, and you know that it is not any fun.

Photo by Dave Morey

Therefore, in September we set up where Clifton wants us to set up and modify our expectations accordingly.? We will probably be back at our usual launch site next month.? Even within these restrictions, a lot of people showed up and had a lot of fun.? I?ll stick in the World Famous Motor Use Summary Table here:

I shall browse through the flight cards and mention flyers and flights that caught my interest.? The order is generally ?small motor? to ?large motor? but not exactly.? Ed Withers brought a Semroc kit called the Batroc that I had not seen before.? It flew quite well on an A8.? Allen Harrell (ably assisted by his granddad Tommy and Aunt Natalie) had a few flights in the low-power range, also, with two C6-powered flights and Wigglewump on an F24.? Special thanks to Natalie for the cookies, this time both chocolate chip and oatmeal/date varieties.

The first flight of the 2017/2018 season was made by Dan Fritsch, who flew his Madcow Mini Cowabunga on a D12.?? This is an interesting coincidence, because in September of 2007, exactly 10 years ago, I made the first flight ever at the Bayboro field with my own Jaguar loaded with an Estes D12.? Somebody suggested that we should make this an annual ritual, for good luck.?? The first flight of each season at Bayboro should be made by somebody flying an Estes D12.?? Works for me.

We all need to say a big Thank You to Mike Collier, who took most of the launch pads back to his place of business over the summer and completely re-built most of our mid-power launch pads.? The old yellow tripod, which had corroded away to a loose set of steel tubes, was totally reconstructed, and both of the quad-pods were rebuilt in a more stable arrangement.?? Both of the quad-pods can handle 10-10 and 15-15 rails, as well as a variety of rods.?? Mike also welded the loose nut back on one of the legs of Kelly Mercer?s old Unistrut rail pad.?? If that weren?t enough, he also had 2 big decals of the club logo printed up and applied them to the club trailer.?? Have a look during the next launch.?? We all owe Mike a big debt of gratitude.?? Check out the pads and thank Mike yourself at a future launch.?? We also need to thank David Cox, who went through the beat-up high-power launch controller and the trolley on wheels that contains the launch relay circuits.?? David fixed all the broken buttons and switches, got the continuity check functions working again, and gave us 5 working channels to play with while Kurt Hesse gets the new system finished.

One of my greatest pleasures is seeing old friends from the Whitakers days come back and join us at Bayboro.? This month Thomas Cox returned to the hobby and had a successful L1 TRA re-certification flight using his Blue Phenix and flying on an Aerotech I357T.?? Flight and recovery were perfect, so, welcome back to High Power!? Thomas also had some problems with old Aerotech motors left over from the Whitakers days, some of which were very hard to light.? One particular motor never ignited the propellant, but the delay grain lit up and burned for more than 25 seconds, producing smoke out the back until the ejection charge finally fired, popping off the nose cone and parachute.

Mike Nay has been working on his cluster ignition project for a while, and on Saturday he finally got it to work.? His Triple Trouble #2 was loaded with a central E16 and two D12?s in detachable side pods, each of which were designed to come down under its own parachute.?? On Saturday, he finally got everything to work on time and in the way they were designed.?? The total installed impulse for this flight was in the F motor range, so? this flight is listed under the F motors in the motor use summary.

Photo By Jim Livingston

I haven?t awarded the ?best rocket name? award in a while, but this month it will have to go to Steve Polk?s Disturbing News, which resembled a CBU or some other piece of military airplane-dropped weaponry.?? This was flown on an Aerotech H180W for a successful flight.? Dave Morey had a great flight with his Loc IV, which used a central I245G and air-started 4 D5?s, mainly for a lot of smoke.? Everything worked exactly like Dave programmed it, and recovery was perfect.

Saturday?s biggest motor was flown by C. J. Lucas in his Eagle Claw 4.? The motor was a homemade 54mm J595, which he made himself, not just the propellant but he machined the casing and nozzle, also.?? The flight was perfect and recovery was exactly right.

Sunday was a little more windy, and the direction was still less than desirable.?? Robbie Kirk came back to fly some more rockets in the F through H range.? Henry and Sam Hartman joined us on Sunday and took advantage of the great weather to fly several rockets in the G to H range, to great success as I recall.??? Sam Delong made the trip from Wilmington to do some serious flying on Sunday.? I have cards in the box that record flights with a G64W, H54W, H180W, J244 and J290 motors.? Apparently Sam likes the white-smoke formulas!

The big deal on Sunday was the culmination of a lengthy, quixotic attempt by Joe Hill to airstart 2 outboard motors using the old-school method of igniting therma-lite segments with flash bulbs, while one end of the therma-lite is stuck up in the outboard motors.?? He tried and failed on Saturday, with a central Loki I210 and two outboard AT G53FJ motors.?? The I motor lit just fine and the flight was safe and recovered intact, but the outboard G?s did not light.?? On Sunday Joe tried again with a central Loki I377CT and the same two outboard G53?s.?? This time everything worked exactly as planned, and the flight was spectacular.? A perfect initial I377 burn, followed by a smoky G-motor boost.?? Like all successful airstarts, it was a treat to watch.

I have started keeping score on the Jolly Logic Chute Release product.? This month we had 10 Jolly Logic flights, 8 of which worked as planned, and 2 which did not open on schedule.? We shall pursue this matter and try to find out why the successful flights worked and the unsuccessful ones did not.? Every rocket flight is an experiment, and we can learn something if we gather the data and catalogue it.

Alan Whitmore

Prefect, Tripoli East NC

After a grueling June and July, we finally caught a break in the weather and had a (relatively) cool Saturday for our launch at Butner, the last Butner launch of 2017.? A light breeze and occasional cloud cover made for some very pleasant flying conditions.? I shall try to list every flight, alphabetically by flyer?s last name.

There were a whole family of Ambrose there, and they were certainly busy.? Owen Ambrose flew his Orange Arrow on a B4, the Solar Warrior on an A3, a rocket called Yankee on an A3, and a 2 stage Loadstar II on a B6-0 to a B6-4.? Jarrod Ambrose flew the Old School on a B6 and then Blue and Gold on an A3.?? Somewhere in there, Sadie Ambrose flew her Scout II on an A3.? The Ambroses have benefitted from the generosity of Matt Fletcher, who gave away a lot of his low power rockets before going off to college.

Jimmy Blackley flew his Aspire on a D12 and had a much more satisfying flight than with last month?s C11.? A whole bunch of kids showed up at about the same time and just filled up the sky.? Natalie, Nicole, and Nery Flores all had good flights on small rockets with the A8 motor, and Natalie learned something about stability and short rockets with the two flights of her Super Flyer.? The first was unstable, but resulted in no damage, and she was able to put some modeling clay in the nose cone to bring the center of gravity forward, and the second flight worked perfectly.? Armand LoBuglio also flew his Maverick in this group.? Nice flight and a good recovery.

Chuck Hall flew a beautifully-finished Little Joe II model on an Aerotech E28T reload, for a great flight.? Safe recovery far away from the asphalt.? Elio Lobuglio flew his Sky Writer and Big Bertha, both on B6?s, for two more fine flights.?? Dave Morey had two good flights; one with his Centaur two stage on a C6 staging to an A8, and the other using his Defender ground-starting 2 B6s and 1 C6.

Mike Nay flew his helicopter-style recovery rocket called Flip Flyer on a C6, and then his Blue Streak on an F15 which worked extremely well.? We were a little apprehensive about this one because the F15 does not exactly have a glowing reputation right now.? Mike also enjoyed a moment of triumph when he got all 3 E12 motors in his Triple Trouble project to light on the pad, and then realized that he may have put too much parachute on the rocket to bring it down from the maximum altitude of a perfect motor ignition sequence.?? Two of the 3 separate parts drifted off into the woods to the Southwest.? Extremely unfortunate, because there was a key-camera on the main section.? I have the other side-pod in my truck.

Alan Whitmore flew his Micro Stealth Blue on a B6-4 and the Mini Red Rudy on a C6-7.?? Ed Withers was active all day and made four flights; the Photon Probe on a B6, the Twister on a C6, his famous Caffeine Power on another C6, and topped the power chart with Der Red Max using the Aerotech G53FJ reload.

Thanks to everybody who came out to Butner to fly with us this summer, and a special thanks to the NCSU High Power Rocketry Club for helping watch the gate, collect signatures on the waiver forms, and assist with equipment set-up and tear-down.?? I hope to see most of you in Bayboro this Fall.

Alan Whitmore, Prefect, Tripoli East NC