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June 21, 2007 evening launch report (6/29/2007)
On Thursday, June 21, MASA held its fourth launch of the
year. This solstice evening launch was held at the VFW soccer fields near Elk River. Flying started around
4pm and wrapped up
around 8:30. Turnout was very light; some potential fliers
stayed home due to the chance of thunderstorms. The weather
was actually very nice. The thunderstorms stayed away with
only a light sprinkle felt at the field. In grand evening
fashion, the breeze died down to complete calm after about 7pm.
A few of the flights:
MASA members - please send in your thoughts about the
launch!
Alan Estenson writes:
Just to rub it in a bit <grin>, but you all missed a
lovely evening for launching rockets. The Shmel family and
myself were the only ones to avail ourselves of the VFW fields
to fly some rockets last night. It was sprinkling a little when
I arrived, but that quickly passed. One dark cloud later gave us
a few drops; otherwise, the sun came out, and the weather was
very nice. The breeze was out of the east, but, in typical
evening fashion, had dropped to essentially calm conditions by
7:30.
I flew the following
"Quest Thing", A8-3 - good flight, one fin broken on landing
"Alpha Thing", A8-3 - good flight
"Der lil Red Max", 1/2A3-2t - good flight, one fin missing on
landing
"Galileo", 1/2A3-2t - good flight, two legs popped loose on
landing
"Bullpup", B4-4 - good flight
"Tangent", B6-4 - good flight
"Hercules", B6-0; B6-6 - at staging, the booster motor spit out
leaving the booster stage attached to the sustainer. The upper
stage motor, firing through the booster, turned it into a crispy
critter. :-(
"Chain Lightning", D12-5 - good flight, landed in the former
horse pasture across the road
"Screaming Yellow Zonker", E9-6 - good flight
"Rings of Fire", C11-3 - good flight
"Super Duper V2", D12-5 - on liftoff, it must have gotten
momentarily bound up on the rod because it briefly tried to take
the whole pad with it. Needless to say, that negatively impacted
flight performance. The rocket came in ballistic and ejected at
an altitude of, oh, about 3 feet. Some damage to the front end
of the body tube, but nothing that can't be fixed.
Dwayne Shmel writes:
We launched 10 flights as follows, (not in any order):
1. Baby Bertha on a B6-3 - Nice flight, the Baby rocks on.
2. Blue Ninja on a C11-5 - Probably should have used a 3 second
delay.
3. Bull Pup 12D on B4-6.
4. No. 2 Sky Writer on B6-4 - Bottom of plastic fin can melted.
Not sure if it was rebound from the blast deflector or
just radiant heat from motor. Weird.
5. StormCaster on a C6-5 using a 24mm to 18mm adapter.
6. FlisKits A.C.M.E. Spitfire on C11-3 Apogee - The kids in the
park enjoyed this one. Not too much altitude - chute didn't open
completely - but great flight.
7. Fat Boy [YellowJacket] on a C11-5 - chute was too large.
Rocket drifted and landed in parking lot. Minor damage to fins.
8 & 9. X-Flier drag race on B6-4's. Looked like a tie to me.
10. Video BT-56 on a D12-5. Chute separated from video nosecone
at ejection - capsule free fell to ground - no damage. Video was
good. Thanks to Alan for finding the camera.
The Details:
Full launch tally (in Adobe Acrobat PDF form, requires version
6
or newer of the Acrobat reader)
The totals were: 21 flights, 22 motors.
The cumulative total impulse was 177 Ns with an average total
impulse of 8 Ns.
The motor breakdown follows:
|
Type |
# Burned |
| MicroMaxx |
0 |
|
1/4A |
0 |
|
1/2A |
2 |
|
A |
2 |
|
B |
9 |
|
C |
5 |
|
D |
3 |
|
E |
1 |
|
F |
0 |
|
G |
0 |
|
H |
0 |
|
I |
0 |
|
J |
0 |
(Alan Estenson)
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