Your best F100 story...

[Art Upton]

Originally posted by denverdoc
... Hey, best 8 bucks I ever spent. Now best 10 would be down the road 18 months later, east of reno.

East of Reno ?

not that Saloon with all the campers parked out back

 

[Stefan_Jones]

I launched many, many F100s, singly, staged, and in clusters. I do not recall any specific catos or clusters, but I'm sure there were a couple of "blow forwards" in there.

I once launched a NCR Quantum II on a F100 / F7 combo. Bad mistake! It staged as it was arcing over, and kept arcing. Powered into the ground and got thoroughly crunched. I eventually rebuilt it, and flew it many times with F100 and Rocketflite F110 / F50 combinations.

Addendum: FINDING that first power-prang resulted in the worst case of poison ivy in my life. Great thobbing sheets of juicy blisters on my belly and wrists.

Catos? You wanna talk Catos?

The EARLY Rocketflite F motors -- I forget the designation -- were not very reliable. My friend Ray Carlino flew a cluster of two of them -- Silver Streaks -- at a LIARS flight on a dry Long Island summer day. One, maybe both catoed. Split their casings, tumbled all over, and set MULTIPLE grass fires.

My late, arch-dweeby friend Jeff Glass captured it on video tape. This poor guy had terrible asthma, which was to kill him 2003. The tape, now long lost, had a "voice over" of him wheezing and gasping as he panned around capturing a half-dozen guys frantically wielding fire extinguishers, buckets of water, and their feet to put out miniature blazes. At one point Jeff spotted a smoulder right near him, and shouted for help; the camera bucked and jerked as he stomped it out himself.

Poor Jeff. I wish he and that tape were still around.

 

[denverdoc]

Originally posted by Art Upton
East of Reno ?

not that Saloon with all the campers parked out back

Same place, ;-D named after the wild horses that populate Nevada. At the time (1972) it was a bunch of trailers hitched together. Think the owner Joe Conforte ended up in prison on tax evasion charges, ownership changed hands a couple of times, before finally closing. Haven't had the inclination to check it out first hand on my trips back to Black Rock, but like to know if anyone knows whether its still open and a fave with the truckers.
John S:

 

[Mike Dennett]

Originally posted by terryg
I do not have any horror stories at all. We converted an estes maxibrute V2 to fly on F100's, which it did without any failures at all.
Quite impressive launches too! It survived our first BAR phase only to be lost in our latest BA-BAR addiction, when the ejection charge was left out. Gave a too realistic flight , look out London.

The big cool modrocs to fly in the late70's - early '80's in our part of the world were Estes Honest Johns and V-2's converted to fly on SSRS F67's, or F100's when the F67's weren't available. The structural upgrade was to fill the fins with expanding foam. Oooh ahh. Problem is, the delay/ejection charge on the F67's was none too reliable and a few of these lawn darted, but so what..

 

[Garoq]

Here is a photo of my 3 X F100 cluster rocket (an Enerjet 2650) flown at NARAM-16 in 1974.

Left to right: Fred Shecter, Marc "Moose" Lavigne, Mike Martin, Bob Del Principe (holding rocket), Jim Rea.

 

[Garoq]

...And here is another one on the pad.

From left: Mark Mayhle (SSRS/Crown), yours truly, Bob Del Principe, unknowns.

I tried to fly it again with a cluster of 3 X F67 Enerjets, but the RSO wouldn't allow it.

 

[Mike Dennett]

I have some shots of Scott Pearce's Slobovian Avenger from LDRS 2 (or 3, forget which), which had 6 or 7 F100's and the remainder of the 60 motors being an assortment of D18's, D20's, and E5's IIRC. I'll get those scanned and posted here in the next day or two - that was a memorable BP cluster flight. I'd like to see the Cineroc footage from that sometime - there were three of them, one must have worked at least. No cato's either.

 

[denverdoc]

Originally posted by garoq
...And here is another one on the pad.

From left: Mark Mayhle (SSRS/Crown), yours truly, Bob Del Principe, unknowns.

I tried to fly it again with a cluster of 3 X F67 Enerjets, but the RSO wouldn't allow it.

Looks like you and Mark had the same barber--oops I mean hair stylist. Did you have any idea then that rockets were gonna be your career, and thanks in large part to the efforts of guys like yourself, Frank K, et al, that we would look back upon these "monster" projects thinking how quaint?

John S

 

[Art Upton]

Originally posted by denverdoc
... Haven't had the inclination to check it out first hand on my trips back to Black Rock, but like to know if anyone knows whether its still open and a fave with the truckers...

I've past it twice in the past two years heading to Reno from black rock.

The sign says the town is the same name as the Saloon, and it looks like the towns population is 53, or comprised of the 35 campers in the Saloon's back parking lot

Judging from the front parking lot, the town and Saloon were open for business

Art

 

[denverdoc]

Originally posted by Art Upton
I've past it twice in the past two years heading to Reno from black rock.

The sign says the town is the same name as the Saloon, and it looks like the towns population is 53, or comprised of the 35 campers in the Saloon's back parking lot

Judging from the front parking lot, the town and Saloon were open for business

Art

Art,
Reassuring to know some things never change, w/o getting off the off-ramp and driving up I wasn't sure, and that particular trip down memory lane would not have gone over big with the girlfriend (who BTW sews the chutes for my bigger birds--just hear her saying, sorry darling, I thought the thread was the stuff we normally use).
JS

 

[Garoq]

Originally posted by denverdoc
Looks like you and Mark had the same barber--oops I mean hair stylist. Did you have any idea then that rockets were gonna be your career, and thanks in large part to the efforts of guys like yourself, Frank K, et al, that we would look back upon these "monster" projects thinking how quaint?

John S

Yeah, we were mistaken for "brothers" a few times.

Those were the early Composite Dynamics days, and while I wanted to make rocketry my career, I had no idea about how difficult and convoluted a process it was going to be.

 

[denverdoc]

Originally posted by garoq
Yeah, we were mistaken for "brothers" a few times.

Those were the early Composite Dynamics days, and while I wanted to make rocketry my career, I had no idea about how difficult and convoluted a process it was going to be.

The ninfinger catalog for Composite dynamics I could find was 1981, I was asking about even earlier like when the pic was taken in 1974. Not that it matters, just curious. And I'm sure its been a long strange trip indeed. But while we were doing this memory lane thing, occurred to me that were it not for the "founding fathers" of HPR we might all still be flying BP.
JS
(Which by the way, when inhaled, can cause nasty chemical pneumonitis--I took too big a whiff off a Big Bertha as a kid, and coughed for weeks.)

 

[Initiator001]

Originally posted by Mike Dennett
I have some shots of Scott Pearce's Slobovian Avenger from LDRS 2 (or 3, forget which), which had 6 or 7 F100's and the remainder of the 60 motors being an assortment of D18's, D20's, and E5's IIRC. I'll get those scanned and posted here in the next day or two - that was a memorable BP cluster flight. I'd like to see the Cineroc footage from that sometime - there were three of them, one must have worked at least. No cato's either.

I copied the footage from the Slobovian Avenger on to 8mm video back when Scott and I were both working for AeroTech.

No catos and all the Cinerocs functioned fine with good footage. The only issue was the F100s needed longer delays as the recovery system ejected before the rocket reached apogee.

 

[Art Upton]

Originally posted by garoq
.....
Those were the early Composite Dynamics days, and while I wanted to make rocketry my career, I had no idea about how difficult and convoluted a process it was going to be...

I had no idea back in '76 a few of those green cylinders was going to infect me with an addiction so bad

I am glad you kept up on the processes, as difficult as they were; it's helped us all.

Thanks !

 

[Garoq]

Originally posted by denverdoc
The ninfinger catalog for Composite dynamics I could find was 1981, I was asking about even earlier like when the pic was taken in 1974. Not that it matters, just curious. And I'm sure its been a long strange trip indeed. But while we were doing this memory lane thing, occurred to me that were it not for the "founding fathers" of HPR we might all still be flying BP.

Well I was talking about 1974 too, IIRC CD offered its first products in 1975, but I started experimenting in 1973. NARAM-16 was the first major launch that I brought polyester-AP motors to demo...one CATOed in Chuck Mund's 2-stage Cineroc vehicle, and at least one worked normally (see movie frame below).

 

[dwmzmm]

Originally posted by garoq
...And here is another one on the pad.

From left: Mark Mayhle (SSRS/Crown), yours truly, Bob Del Principe, unknowns.

I tried to fly it again with a cluster of 3 X F67 Enerjets, but the RSO wouldn't allow it.

RSO wouldn't allow it?! But hey, I also love that classic Cineroc
on the right...

Great pic, Gary!

 

[Art Upton]

Originally posted by dwmzmm
RSO wouldn't allow it?! ....

Remember those days 3 F motors and a weight of more then 16oz made it an "unmanned rocket" rather then a model rocket

 

[dbarrym]

My best memories of the F100 were trying to get the old FSI "Mach Dart" system (F100 booster, F7? sustainer in a tiny airframe) to actually go M1. I must have gone through 5 or 6 of these at Lucerne in the mid/late 70's. Two CATO's, one quite spectacular, with a chunk of propellant landing near a club motor storage box.

I hung with Dave Griffith (aka RATT Works hybrids) , Mike Smalley, Dave Chapman, et al (the core of the "Hypersonics" club in SoCal) as one of the ankle-biters in the early days of HPR and the beginning of the Lucerne Dry Lake launches. I also remember Gary R and the early Composite Dynamics test motors, Kory Kline, Jerry Irvine (and his tiny BP rockets and large foam/paper monsters), and the really fun zinc/sulpher "shovel recovery" launches at the PRS test range in Mojave. Fun times.

 

[n3tjm]

Originally posted by dbarrym
My best memories of the F100 were trying to get the old FSI "Mach Dart" system (F100 booster, F7? sustainer in a tiny airframe) to actually go M1.

F100 to a D20

 

[Nuke Rocketeer]

Originally posted by dbarrym
My best memories of the F100 were trying to get the old FSI "Mach Dart" system (F100 booster, F7? sustainer in a tiny airframe) to actually go M1. I must have gone through 5 or 6 of these at Lucerne in the mid/late 70's. Two CATO's, one quite spectacular, with a chunk of propellant landing near a club motor storage box.

I hung with Dave Griffith (aka RATT Works hybrids) , Mike Smalley, Dave Chapman, et al (the core of the "Hypersonics" club in SoCal) as one of the ankle-biters in the early days of HPR and the beginning of the Lucerne Dry Lake launches. I also remember Gary R and the early Composite Dynamics test motors, Kory Kline, Jerry Irvine (and his tiny BP rockets and large foam/paper monsters), and the really fun zinc/sulpher "shovel recovery" launches at the PRS test range in Mojave. Fun times.

Tried that combo 3 times, never heard a sonic boom.

 

[cjl]

Originally posted by Nuke Rocketeer
Tried that combo 3 times, never heard a sonic boom.

Then again, I've sent several more modern rockets supersonic, and seen several more, and I've never heard a sonic boom from them either...

I don't think that's an accurate way to judge if it broke mach...

 

[n3tjm]

You won't hear a sonic boom... since the rocket is launched vertically, the shockwave is not going the right angle. Also, since the rocket is so small, that may be another factore. Show that the rocket does not reach Mach 1 till near burnout of the D20.

 

[jraice]

Doesnt the magnitude of the boom relate to how loud the rocket is? Perhaps a jet engine is much loader and creates a large boom?

Well anyways I dont know about that but I agree the vertical nature of the shock wave forms a cone, if your inside the cone you cant hear it.

If a large enough rocket though, goes mach relativly low you can hear it from a distance (say your looking for your rocket 1/2-1 mile away, might have a chance of hearing it).

 

[cjl]

Actually, it has to do with the size of the rocket, not the loudness of the rocket. The larger the object, the more air it pushes aside and compresses, the louder the boom (of course, this is also shape and speed dependent).

As for the cone thing, I don't know if you could even hear it then. I believe it spreads out horizontally (not down), and you couldn't hear it unless you were actually at the elevation of the mach-breaking. I'm not too sure about this though...

 

[shreadvector]

Not a cone until you go beyond mach 1. At mach 1 it is a flat shock wave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_number

 

[Art Upton]

Originally posted by cjl
Then again, I've sent several more modern rockets supersonic, and seen several more, and I've never heard a sonic boom from them either...

I don't think that's an accurate way to judge if it broke mach...

Hi CJL,

I use this to tell if it broke mach

Pico Alt AA-1

 

[cjl]

That works

 

[DJDeadParrot]

A guy I knew in my early days of flying with Connecticut Tripoli had an Estes Mega-Sizz fitted or retro-fitted with a 27mm motor mount. Saw it fly once with an F7. Couple of months later, an F7 CATOed on the pad

For a while [most of 1990], I thought F100s were a great cheap alternative to the Aerotech F motors, and that's about all I ever flew in my LOC Onyx and AAA Pennsylvania Crude.

 

[Mike Dennett]

Originally posted by Initiator001
I copied the footage from the Slobovian Avenger on to 8mm video back when Scott and I were both working for AeroTech.

No catos and all the Cinerocs functioned fine with good footage. The only issue was the F100s needed longer delays as the recovery system ejected before the rocket reached apogee.

The flight was great, I remember it well. I'd love to see that footage! Those early LDRS's were very memorable for the variety of stuff people flew. Another such memorable flight, well, attempted flight was the 469 BP motor cluster. I have some pictures of the flaming aftermath. I forgot to scan those Slobovian Avenger photos, I'll try to do that this week.

 

[High Desert Rocketry]

F-100 flight yesterday at the FAR test and launch facility.