July 2001 (evening) launch report (7/7/2001)
It was on short notice; It was a beautiful summer evening; It
was a small (but loyal) group of rocketeers. (You can kick
yourself now for missing it!)
On Saturday evening, July 7, a few stalwart MASA members gathered
at the sod farm in Blaine. This special evening launch had
been called on 24 hours notice. Launching was limited to 1 lb
rockets, but that didn't keep the numbers down with 41 flights
recorded.
This launch was BYOLS (Bring Your Own Launch System). It
used a type of "misfire alley" range setup with a flight
card being filled out for each flight.
A few of the flights:
Alan Estenson's "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy"
lawn-darted into the mud on a D12-3 flight. Seems someone
forgot to plug the unused 18mm cluster tubes... Later Alan
flew the BBVD again on a D12-5 and cluster of two C6-0's. All
three motors lit and the rocket was stable. Unfortunately, the
C6-0's blew out the bulkheads in their motor mount tubes and caused
an early ejection. Kent Peterson had some
lack-of-chute-appearing problems in his Big Bertha, but overcame
them. Kent also had an impressive flight of his Super Big
Bertha on a D12-3. Glen Overby had a long walk to retrieve his
Aerobee 150A launched on a D12-5. Dave Fergus and Tim Bush
both flew Mercury Redstones. Dave had a shy parachute on the
booster, but there wasn't any damage. Tim also flew his
down-scaled Sub-Orbital Transport on an A10-3t.
Glen Overby successfully staged his D9C on a C6-0 to C6-7, but
Dave Fergus wasn't as fortunate when he flew his Comanche-3 on B6-0
to B6-6. Alan and Tim both had strange flights due to odd nozzle
erosion causing thrust vectoring. Tim Bush's Tartar was
dramatically unstable on a F20-7, and Beldar lost his head (but it
was found) when flown on two C6-5's.
Alan Estenson successfully flew his LOC Onyx on a F20. Dave
Fergus flew his Cosmodrome Nike Smoke on a F40, but it (and his RMS
casing) was lost to the trees to the east. It was joining the
upper portion of Alan Estenson's "Mimi" which had drifted
there earlier after an ejection separation. Later, they
were joined by Glen Overby's Nike-ASP, flown on a F24-4, as Glen
declared that the "Rocket-Eating forest prefers Nike's"
(and RMS casings). Alan tried to send his "Super Dubro
511" to join them by relabeling it "Nike Wannabe"
with black marker and stuffing a G35 in it. However, a shy
streamer resulted in a ballistic recovery into the muddy
field.
The Details:
Full launch tally (in
Adobe Acrobat PDF form, requires version 4 or newer of the Acrobat
reader)
The totals were: 41 flights, 45 motors. The
cumulative total impulse was 735 Ns with an average total impulse of
16.3 Ns. The motor breakdown follows:
|
Type |
# Burned |
| MicroMaxx |
0 |
|
1/4A |
0 |
|
1/2A |
3 |
|
A |
2 |
|
B |
10 |
|
C |
17 |
|
D |
7 |
|
E |
1 |
|
F |
4 |
|
G |
1 |
|
H |
0 |
(Alan Estenson)
|
