8 years to recover!

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tfish

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Luckily, this is not a story about me trying to recover from and injury or a health issue. Instead is mostly a story about a motor case. Yep, a motor case. A very rare, one of a kind motor case to be exact. Most of us have been around long enough to know about Dr. Rocket motor cases.
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Dr. Rocket was a nickname given to Michael Reiner TRA# 831. Mike had obtained his L3 flying an all metal N2000 powered rocket for a successful Level III Certification at Balls 8 (1998 Utah) I believe it contained a modular aluminum fin can. After his certification flight Mike was looking for a project that was a bit more challenging. He had a few "special" items made for himself by the company making the motor cases. One of the items was a RMS 98/25600 Serial # 001 Date 06/99 Experimental "O" Motor
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Mike never got around to flying this project. The case was sold and passed hands several times. Some of the sightings of this case was with Ken Finwall. In 2004 it was spotted at CTRA/Narconn Invitational XI where 13 year old Steven Heller wanted to buy it. Instead the case was sold to Eric Stackpole. Eric had the case for a few years. He had been 'using' the case, as a mandrel to layup body tubes. I entered the picture in 2009 when I purchase the case from Eric. I may have had to promise to fly it as part of the purchase agreement!

When I got the case the anodizing was already faded. I never did hear how it got that way. I like long motor cases and have had pretty good luck making research loads for them. I ran some BurnSim numbers using Swamp Gas. SG is a very forgiving formula and it works very well for very long motors. This case takes 59 inches of propellant. The 98/15360 case takes 36 inches. My BurnSim numbers looked pretty good. Now I needed a rocket to put it in. I decided to go with a fin can and enough "rocket" to hold the chutes and electronics.
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I met AJ, his wife Ali and Woody at Balls 18 2009. The case was actually going to get to fly finally! The morning of the launch the temperature was down in the teens. It was freezing cold. We got the rocket on the pad and pointed in the right direction. We're hearing all the right beeps and flashes and are getting signals from the beeline GPS and Tx.
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So we let her fly!
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Everything was going great! For about the first 20 seconds! First we loose GPS lock. No biggie this thing is screaming. Then we loose Tx. Then we begin to wonder what the heck happened. Woody thinks he hears it come in hot out to the East of us. Then we begin to think with the cold temps did our batteries give up? We look and we look, then we looked some more. No sign of it anywhere. I begin to look at the bright side of things. The motor didn't cato. The rocket stayed together and didn't rain fins down on us. So it kind of worked and we go home.

I had the wrong video in...sorry! That was of a 5" min dia rocket that was "misplaced"

Here is the right video!
[video=youtube;nqiqZPfVSJ0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqiqZPfVSJ0[/video]


End of Story
 
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Don't you hate stories that end this way? I sure do. I have to many rocket stories that end with "Rocket Misplaced @ Black Rock"

Fast forward to Balls 2017. I'm not having the best of luck with a couple of my flights. I'm just getting back from recovering one of them and Becky yells over "hey Tony I think they found one of your rockets". I've always felt that if I misplaced enough rocket out at Black Rock, someday I might start finding some of them. Anyway, I go strolling over to the LCO table and as I approach I see it!
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My first thought was..It worked! It was fully intact. I carried it back to camp and looked it over. The chutes and shock cords are now garbage after laying out in the elements for 8 years. I had to use a hacksaw to open up the electronics bay. It looked pretty good.
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The Beeline GPS is still wrapped in it's foam padding. I realized Greg with Beeline is just a few camps down from me. I take it to him and told him the story. He was amazed that it's is such great shape. He kept it to tinker with it at home. I put the rocket back together and I was a happy camper.
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Once back at home I turned my attention to the motor case. The closures came right off as did the fin can. The 2 piece liner slides right out. Status of motor case - usable! The fin can looked great. Status - minor sanding = usable! Body tubes and nose cone - maybe usable. Next up were the electronics. What's the chance of them working? I started with the ARTS 2. I got it hooked up and had issues with the program seeing the ARTS. (which is a very normal issue with them) With just the right turn this on, plug that in and open this up, it connects and downloads the flight data. Next was the G-WiZ LCX. It had some corrosion issues that I cleaned up with electrical parts cleaner and then some denatured Alcohol. Plugged in a battery and....nothing. Not a single beep, no sparks or even that magic smoke that's normally inside these kinds of things. It's dead.

I got an email from Greg with the GPS file. It shows that the Beeline lost signal a few seconds into the flight. It re-acquired at 14,000 on it's way down. It landed 6 miles to the Northeast from where it was launched. The ARTS data was just under 41,000 feet mach 2.3 and 20G's with a nice burn profile.
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So, What did I learn? #1. Don't give up so fast on the tracking. We may have been preoccupied with 'poor us', and should have continued tracking for several minutes longer then we did. #2. Things are not always lost! Sometimes they are just Misplaced!

I want to thanks the Alaska Crew for finding it and especially Nick, for not thinking it was "Playa Junk" the second time he walked over it!

PS..Look for the second flight of this Rocket at Balls 27?

Tony Alcocer TRA & NAR L3 AeroPac
 
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Love the story, and the ending... but especially
"I've always felt that if I misplaced enough rocket out at Black Rock, someday I might start finding some of them."
 
Steve wasn’t the only one that wanted that case at the Invitational! Cool story, thanks for sharing!


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This is a fantastic story, thank you for taking the time to share it.
 
I remember when you flew this. Glad you got it back!
 
Don't you hate stories that end this way? I sure do. I have to many rocket stories that end with "Rocket Misplaced @ Black Rock"

Tony Alcocer TRA & NAR L3 AeroPac

I, too, have a few rockets out there that you have not found yet. It would be nice to tie up the loose ends on both.

Jim
 
I am absolutely captivated by the photo of the rocket laying on the ground, exposed to the desert elements for eight years.

--Michael
 
I am absolutely captivated by the photo of the rocket laying on the ground, exposed to the desert elements for eight years.

--Michael

It is pretty cool to see and feel what the "elements" had done to the rocket and recovery gear. I half way expected to find the inside of the motor to look like it had been a rat and mouse brothel....but it had not.
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I did reach out to Dr. Reiner, and mailed him a copy of this story. I have not heard back from him...yet

I wrote this for AeroPac's newsletter then offered it to Rockets Magazine, who picked it up too.

The latest issue of Rockets (Balls Issue) is actually out now https://libertylaunchsystems.com/
Tony
 
I'm glad you got her back; I HATE leaving rockets in the field.
 
Wow,, that's too cool..
I hear of rockets found a couple of years later
but they're rarely in such good shape..
That's really great,, good for you Tony..

Smokin flight too,, lol..

Teddy
 
Tony, congrats on a successful flight and recovery.

I have yet to go the GPS route. Am I the only one who sees they seem to have issues, and are not as robust a tracking system as they should be?


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That is a great story! Longest recovery ever? Thank you for sharing it! Will it ever fly again?
 
Ummmm, Give more credit where credit is due. Programming those earlier Beeline GPS's took finesse and I think some record attempts were nixed in the past because of programming issues. Especially the G-Switch models. Jar the thing before launch and the thing starts recording. The other programming dealie is I felt that best way was to have it record and when it got to the end, STOP! There were various ways to deal with the limited memory on those early units such as treating it as "circular" and running the risk
of writing over your flight data if you didn't recover it "in time". Other thing with the early units was the 16mW power output. On the ground, out on the playa the ground salts, I'm told, suck up Rf so the ground footprint stinks.
Not anyone's fault but a fact when one is flying out there. Note that range at altitude is just as good as anyplace else, it's the ground footprint that's effected The other thing is it may have gone so far you might have been out of range to hear it even when it was at altitude?

I saw a guy who put a standard Diamond Ham radio base station ground plane antenna up on a 25 foot pole. You know the single vertical element with the three element ground plane. He had it on a base and bungee corded it to the door handle of his beater truck! Man did he get the range out if that thing! Nowadays there are more powerful (Rf wise) trackers available and perhaps a not so heavy ground station would be needed anymore to track. The loss of signal on ascent is not surprising. The earlier BeelineGPS chipsets I'm told didn't lock as well under G loads but still did fine for tracking. So when are you going to post the obligatory .kml google track?:)

Great story Tony. Congrats on it being found. Greg sending it back? Ummmmm, I forgot to add, did you do a ground range test before flight? If the rocket/motor performed nominally it might have been the range was too far for
the D7's to decode? If the .kml file shows a good lock on the satellites the problem was getting the APRS packets decoded over Rf. The Beelines will dutifully write the positions to memory and one can have it save once per second if so inclined
while the Rf positions go out once every 5 seconds. Another thing, I know this was 2009 but I have two D7A(g's) that the receive oscillators have gone out of spec and they are deaf for APRS tracking for more than 1 block now. Not worth
getting fixed. Kurt
 
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Congrats Tony, you have given new hope to everyone who has ever lost a rocket.
 
Tony, congrats on a successful flight and recovery.

I have yet to go the GPS route. Am I the only one who sees they seem to have issues, and are not as robust a tracking system as they should be?


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As long as one is well practiced with their GPS receiving setup. Plus, have the room and additional receiving paraphernalia for RDF tracking, they can use two trackers for some degree of redundancy.

That absolute key here is they have to ingrain their GPS receiving technique as well practice second nature. Me, I'm constantly dinking around trying to find something better and had messed with a variety of methods.
I usually a few weeks in advance pick out what I am going to use and "practice" to refresh my memory but that's just me.

One method I don't have to worry about is APRS tracking on a D72 (or D74 now) with a Garmin 60 Cs or CsX. Plug in the cable from the handheld Garmin to the Kenwood, light the Beeline GPS of the Ham radio flavor and go fly.
All the while being able to monitor on a map what's happening. Follow the arrow on the Garmin and takes you right to the rocket. Just don't put the Beeline in a metallic painted or CF rocket, secure it so the board doesn't shear
the battery cable and one will be in tip top shape. Just read a couple of pages of instructions in the Garmin and D72A books and good to go. No Bluetooth pairing or software diddling to mess with. No hand transferring of coordinates
from one device to another and risk a mistake there.

It's just like RDF Mark. It takes practice! I am a masochist who sometimes does a pile of hard prep (with other methods) to be able to walk right up to the rocket and have some insurance to fall back on if an anomaly occurs.
Said anomaly is being able to see the drift pattern on a map if loss of signal occurs at a long distance. RDF one has to be able to hold a lock on the bearing when loss of signal occurs............ Although I think if one invests (hint hint) in a
handheld mapping GPS with a "Sight 'n Go" feature (that is you point it in the direction you want to go and it will LOCK the bearing for you) you can hold the GPS parallel to your Yagi beam and lock the bearing when LOS occurs.
Of course if you got a visual on the rocket that's unnecessary but I could see where a GPS directed line on one's RDF bearing with a completely out of sight flight and landing could give them a little edge getting out to the
ground footprint of the tracker.

With a breadcrumb live map track it's anti-climactic. Go to the last known position and if no rocket, proceed in the direction the track suggests with the rocket coming in down low on your map. Now if one is also flying with an RDF tracker along for the ride with a better ground foot print than their GPS tracker well, just whip out the Yagi, shoot the bearing and get it. Kurt
 
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Tony -

Most amazing story. I love that your project found its way back home. Your story resonates with me in a couple very similar ways.

I think Woody only made (2) 3" x 60" motor cases, and I've successfully flown it with an ANCP formulation and in a similar configuration with a DVK fin can... I too lost lock with the onboard tracker (Walston) right after launch, however the rocket was found later by another flyer.

Fast forward to another project, while out searching for the Wimpy-Q on the playa fringes we stumbled onto the Colo-RAD-O project we had flown several years earlier...
 
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This is awesome; I love a TonyA Black Rock story!!!

Glad you got it back and look forward to see what you stuff the case with next time!!!:)
 
Thanks for all the replies.

I hope to fly this rocket again next years at balls.

I hate to admit to how many rockets I have misplaced out at Balls over the years (especially to my wife!)

There is a 5" min dia with a kosdon case I'd like to get back next
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For those wondering. I sort of blame Jim Amos and Woody, Dennis, Jason and others for adding to my "rocketry delinquency" at an early point in my journey!

Thanks guys!

Tony
 
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