NXRS 2017 - June 23rd-26th - Oregon * HILL BACK ON*

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I'm really looking forward to this weekend. Weather is, um, normal and hot. Winds look good - even high altitude winds look good. My L3 bird looks sharp and is ready for the flight. Paperwork is ready. Let's do this!

-brant
 
Weather looks fantastic...
.. and the club has arranged catering (if you were on the mailing list!!!)

This looks to be the BEST ever NXRS.

I know of at least 3 two stage projects, 3+ L3 attempts, a handful of N's and a fistful of O's

Bring your camera, and LOTS of water.
 

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I dont believe that Gary has sent out an email yet. Hint - Bring cash. The proposed menu sounds excellent for desert fayre as long as you like meat. Although we hold no guarantees where that meat was sourced from. We ARE in the middle of BF nowhere.
 
The forecast has changed a little.

Lower winds (YEAH!!) with higher temps.

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Congratz to all the new L3's, 2's and 1's from this event. I lost count!
I can say that one used a Polecat upscale FatBoy(Man) and one used a Black Brant... or would that give his name away.

AWESOME weekend. Really nice to meet old friends and new.

Highlights of the weekend.
Watching a couple of friends certify to L3.
The Dragonfly - you owe us ALL a new pair of pants Dan!
Helping Pete Ekstrom launch a Team Numb N! He's Back! Hide your....
After launching my own project (top half of a two stage, "Wallace and Gromitt"), and losing telemetry just at Mach, and NOT reaquiring. The Android kept telling me that the rocket was 700 ft above the pad. Then spending nearly 2 hours driving, in some real nice HOT weather, around from one ridgetop to another, radio and Yagi stuck out of the window. No packets.. at all. not even a chirp on the radio.
Went back to the RV to have a coffee, smoke and general sulk. One of the other fliers came over and stuck his phone in my face. "Do you want to know where Wallace is?". I saw a pad in the picture. WHERE? It landed at the away cell, about 100ft from where it started.
Long live Wallace, and thank you who ever you are that brought Wallace safe back home, I can take a guess!
 
Sorry not to say goodbye to everyone, but 48 hours in the Oregon Badlands during a heat wave was about all Clifford (age 8) could handle. After we got packed we made a beeline for the Sisters Subway and it's delicious air conditioning.

It was the most flying I've done for a while - we managed to launch the following:

Bid Daddy - F44
Scratch Spinning Rocket - B6
Arg (shortened Argent) - F50
Night Launch Strobe Rocket - H178
Dragonfly Upscale - L1520
Madcow Squat- F50
Madcow Squat - F15
Madcow Squat - G77
Rocketarium Vortico - D12
Rocketarium Vortico - F24
Rocketarium Vortico- F44
Chester's Cheeto Chaser II - I200

Most were good.

Rob's pants that I soiled were due to a late ejection on the Dragonfly - it did make things interesting!

My night rocket suffered a broken shock cord, I know know that Kevlar does not like tight little knots. Luckily the unlighted booster was found Sunday (with the 38 case undamaged!)

The 2.6" Squat was built by my son and his friend on Saturday. The G77 put it way up there just as the wind picked up. It took me a couple of miles walking through scratchy sage, but it was found. I was thinking the whole time that I really did not want to have to see my son's face if I came back empty-handed.
 
Had some great flights, and one big cato. My L-1000 failed in my 25# redstone that was a complete loss including the 8' rocketman chute, however Gary was there and looked at the casing rupture and will see what they think happened. Lots of glider flights and flights on my Pershing 2. Lunch catering was overpriced for we got and quality was below meh in my opinion. However weather, people and launch were excellent, a fun time was had by the whole family, saw lots of great flights, and Dan Saved me rear when after all that I found I had left my headlights on and gave me a jump. Costco then saved my rear when my rear tire started to delaminate due to the idots at les schwab not balancing my tires correctly and then overinflating them to 80psi instead of 40...

I'm glad my wife talked me into buying a canopy/awning as that was really great in the heat, and a big thanks to John Lyngdal for provding a supply of otter pops to keep my internal coolant temperature down:)

Kids were a great help in recovery, although I still had to photobomb my daughter carrying my Pershing 2:)
Other photo I call "The Audacity of Hope" that my L-1000 was going to work. :)

Frank

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This was my first NXRS and a really great launch all around. Thanks everyone involved. I was able to put up my Hyperloc, a Wildman 4" V2, and an Ascender. Broke the fin can on the V2 (not enough chute I guess), but deployment worked, so I'm happy. Here is my Hyperloc going up:

[YOUTUBE]kfTFID6E-sc[/YOUTUBE]

And it finally came back down correctly! Time to get bigger motors for it!

And here are a few of my cell phone photos from the launch:

Pete can see it, but I don't know if anyone else can!
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Did we mention how nice the weather was:
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It was just as clear at night:
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The Estes Ascender on the pad. This little rocket played guinea pig for me as a test platform for my new Altus Metrum TeleGPS. Perfect flight, perfect recovery, walked straight to it! The TeleGPS is going for a ride in my Go Devil 38 some time later this year.
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Again, thanks everyone! There is nothing like a weekend in the desert with friends and rockets.
 
NXRS was GREAT! Thanks OROC!

Will be interesting to see the numbers from this one.
Seemed to break attendance records based on how packed the flight line was.
Hope somebody posts some flyover drone footage.

We flew only 3 EX motors: a 98mm N plus a 75mm M and L.
All the motors worked great. All flights were perfect.

The only casualty is that Gabe did lose the NC his Bad Bouy - but boy that thing was BAD!!! The I-435 pushed it to about 5k instantly!
A little too much BP for a deployment charge snapped the strap to the NC and we couldn't find it.

His new "Almost MD" rocket - which is built from a pile of scrounged parts as it's 4.5" diameter makes finding parts difficult - got quite the ride from my 100% N-4222 to a about 32k AGL.
I think that was the largest motor flown and might be the highest flight also for the weekend....we'll see what others report.
A picture of his takeoff is at the end - love it when the flame length matches the rocket - a 12' tall rocket!
Clearly, the nest step for this rocket is a visit to the paint booth.

Gabe's night rocket was a cool flight - a 4" kit bash with two blinking 40W LED's. He flew that Saturday at about 9:45PM on a L-900DM. Bitchin flight to about 12k AGL but landing way out in the sage despite a streamer for a drogue. We walked ~ 4 miles in the dark to get that one back. We didn't get back to camp until almost midnight. Would have been nice to spend some time around the campfire , but we were whipped after that hike.

Mike didn't fly as he was checking out some new radio gear - our camp looked like a CIA outpost! Unfortunately the tracking system we really wanted to test failed which was the bummer for the weekend. But Mike had fun talking radios with lots of people who wandered by to see what was in the trailer.

I had to blow out early Sunday - my daughter and I had tickets to Roger Waters in Portland that night.

Good Times!

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PS: I wanted to fly my Intimidator-5 on a 98mm N-2550.
I fully prepped the rocket up to the point where I had to install the motor, stuff the main and install the tracker....almost done.
I went to slide the motor in and it wouldn't fit.
This EX motor case was just a tad fat and I was done with that rocket.

Just as I was realizing my motor was useless, Dan Feller and his [most excellent] Rockit Girls flew their Dragonfly on what looked to be a commercial L.
Knowing the Dragonfly had a 98mm mount, once they recovered I went to see if they wanted to fly again.
I think I heard a couple of the girls let out a little squeal when they heard me ask Dan "Do you want to fly that on an N?"
Unfortunately it was not to be - the motor didn't fit their rocket either - would have been a cool up to watch.

Next time Dan......maybe for Rocketober if the girls are going to be there.
 
If anyone is interested, here is the L-1000 in the Redstone, after the forward part of the casing fails/blows apart, the motor relights and fortunately landed in the cleared pad area and didn't cause any sage fire...My daughter overshot the rocket as she was expecting it to keep going:) so lost the initial rupture, but did catch the motor re-lighting as the remnants of the rocket tumble down. Rocketman chute tore 3/4 shroud lines off, they offered to sell me another at a discount instead of charging me to repair it. Missileworks altimeter/bay stayed in the mid section which at this point was just a 2' long shell of loc cardboard tubing and tumbled down fairly lightly and was fine and flew the next day in my Pershing 2. Launch is at about 1:00 into the video.

[video=youtube;SgY7cuofeOs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgY7cuofeOs[/video]


Here's the pershing 2 flight on a J-270 dms motor to 2200'

[video=youtube;txdpHE9qzVQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txdpHE9qzVQ[/video]
 
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The Redstone flight was a real heartbreaker. I watched you set it up and then saw the flight, horrible.
After having my L1000 shed its thrust ring at Spring Thunder, I got warrantied another L1000. I was actually willing to give it away to ANYONE around the campfire on Saturday night!

L1000, "the DoomSayer" of rocket motors.
 
It's funny, my first two L-1000's I flew in this model came without thrust rings and I knew about the early thrust ring problems they had, then this one showed up with a thrust ring and I was worried about it, even though the date code was more recent than my two L-1000's that performed as expected, so I asked Gary R. about it and the said this was a new motor from end of 2016 with the 3d printed thrust ring that locks into the outside and inside of the case, and had the new thicker case wall tubing, he looked at it afterward and said it was the first one he had seen that had failed that way after the switch to the thicker walls.

I asked them to warrantee with something other than an L-1000 primarily because I no longer have a rocket with a 54mm mount that can fly the L-1000 now, my Pershing 1A does not have sufficient balast built in for that heavy a motor. They said they would warantee with equivalent value motors that would work for me.

I've had failures at the last two NXRS launches, and both times Tim was LCO:) I think his bad luck is rubbing off.....

Frank


The Redstone flight was a real heartbreaker. I watched you set it up and then saw the flight, horrible.
After having my L1000 shed its thrust ring at Spring Thunder, I got warrantied another L1000. I was actually willing to give it away to ANYONE around the campfire on Saturday night!

L1000, "the DoomSayer" of rocket motors.
 
Adding to the thanks for the fantastic launch that OROC put on. It was a brilliant weekend, really couldn't have been any better. It's a beautiful site, with a great bunch of people. Definitely put it on your calendar for next year!
 
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