My local club avoids the holiday weekends by holding one launch in the November/December holiday season. The high power waiver is on for Saturday and Sunday, but Sharon and I like to bring out our LPR/MPR rockets and fly them on Friday. This last weekend, we added in Thursday so we could set up camp with our new Stealth toy hauler for the first time. It's the same model as our old 2014 model, but with upgraded stuff in a 2023 model.
As usual, we were very busy working out details and I didn't take a lot of pictures. Sorry about that, and as you can probably tell, this is a blog about our adventures.
Those of you with slow download times might appreciate that. Sharon did get some, and if you are in the previously group mentioned, be patient...
We brought our new toy hauler over to our house on Wednesday, Nov. 29th to pack it up and get our first tongue weight. With full (95 gal.) water tanks and a full (40 gal.) gas tank, rockets, four launch pads and all our camping stuff, we had just over 1500 lbs. of tongue weight.
Thursday morning we finished up packing and drove out I-10 to Miller road, where they have a certified scale.
Having a one ton truck really helps with distributing the load, and we were well within tolerances on all axles. The only thing that was close was the tongue weight, but the rear axle on "Logan" was only half loaded. We moved all the tables out of our old trailer and put them in the back of the truck:
Although the new trailer is the same model, it has about 600 lbs. less load carrying capacity, so we moved tables and some other stuff into Logan.
Next stop was the Eagle eye launch site, and we were welcomed to our home launch with a typical Arizona sunset:
We spent most of Thursday afternoon setting up the site you see above. One of the major changes was removing one tent from our normal set up. The new awning is longer than the old one, and covers the back of the trailer all the way to the end, so only one tent at the front is necessary.
Friday morning we pulled out all the launch pads and put them out on the range. All four pads, including the (mostly) new Frankum Tri-2 pad were packed in under the rear bunk bed seats:
That includes the 12 ft. 1515 rail that is peeking out at the far right of the picture above. The "U" shaped channel is the attachment/pivot point.
The other three pads are OOP Fade to black pads, which are all lined up out on the range here:
You can just barely see the Tri-2 pad out at the "M" line on the right side of that picture.
Friday was low/mid power rockets, and I started out with my "Smokin' Nike":
It flew on an F67-6, which was a bit under powered for that rocket. I added an Estes altimeter to this flight, and several others that day, but couldn't get any of them to read.
I also flew five other rockets that day, Tommy 2.5 on an F35, it's the third rebuild on a D region tomahawk, Estes Eliminator on an E12-8, LOC Viper 3 on three E12's, Estes Argent dual deploy on a G125, and an old rocket we picked up years ago at Dean Tucker's estate sale that we flew on an old Vulcan Systems F80-6, another under powered flight.
Sharon flew three rockets, An Estes Magician on an E12-6, an Estes Highflyer XL on an E18-7 and an Aerotech Arreaux on a G77-10. Once again, her workload prevented her from prepping many rockets.
Saturday, I started early with my Formula 54/75, flying on a research 54/2000 K541 Sharon's Sparkler 2. It drag separated but landed with little body damage, but shredded the chute.
My other flights that day were a Mad Cow Avalanche on a research 54/2000 K674 Don Alexanders slow white, Fast Freddy, a Wildman 3" punisher, on a research 54/2000 K863 Not your Wimpy Red, Sharon's 3" Dark star on a 54/2550 L1278 DAW, and "Big Bad Dog", a Wildman 4" kit on a 76/6000 M2150 Not your Wimpy Red. That was my highest flight to 17,516 ft.
Sharon wasn't feeling well, and didn't fly anything on Saturday.
We started packing up Saturday after all the flying, but ran out of steam around sunset. Spent about an hour around the campfire with the other club members and crawled into our new king sized bed around 9 pm.
Sunday we finished up packing. The new trailer can convert the bottom bunk into two seats, the passenger side was packed up with launch pads, which is pictured above. The drivers side holds all the chairs, and is where Sharon sets up her office:
Both of those seats can be raised or lowered, which is convenient for Sharon's office. Adjusting it up to allow Sharon to type on her Alien laptop on the drivers side split table:
She keeps it dark to improve visibility on all three of her monitors, but can add LED strip lighting installed on the bottom edge of the bed above.
Since this was the shake down trip with the new toy hauler, we had a few glitches. The major one was a heater thermostat that decided to go offline around midnight the first night. We spend a cold (for us) morning until I figured out that I had to remove a fuse to reboot the digital thermostat and get things fired back up. In the mean time, I threw an old moving blanket on the bed to keep us warmer.
So I will close this post up with a picture of this old desert rat staring at the faulty thermostat, waiting for it to restart the heater:
As usual, we were very busy working out details and I didn't take a lot of pictures. Sorry about that, and as you can probably tell, this is a blog about our adventures.
Those of you with slow download times might appreciate that. Sharon did get some, and if you are in the previously group mentioned, be patient...
We brought our new toy hauler over to our house on Wednesday, Nov. 29th to pack it up and get our first tongue weight. With full (95 gal.) water tanks and a full (40 gal.) gas tank, rockets, four launch pads and all our camping stuff, we had just over 1500 lbs. of tongue weight.
Thursday morning we finished up packing and drove out I-10 to Miller road, where they have a certified scale.
Having a one ton truck really helps with distributing the load, and we were well within tolerances on all axles. The only thing that was close was the tongue weight, but the rear axle on "Logan" was only half loaded. We moved all the tables out of our old trailer and put them in the back of the truck:
Although the new trailer is the same model, it has about 600 lbs. less load carrying capacity, so we moved tables and some other stuff into Logan.
Next stop was the Eagle eye launch site, and we were welcomed to our home launch with a typical Arizona sunset:
We spent most of Thursday afternoon setting up the site you see above. One of the major changes was removing one tent from our normal set up. The new awning is longer than the old one, and covers the back of the trailer all the way to the end, so only one tent at the front is necessary.
Friday morning we pulled out all the launch pads and put them out on the range. All four pads, including the (mostly) new Frankum Tri-2 pad were packed in under the rear bunk bed seats:
That includes the 12 ft. 1515 rail that is peeking out at the far right of the picture above. The "U" shaped channel is the attachment/pivot point.
The other three pads are OOP Fade to black pads, which are all lined up out on the range here:
You can just barely see the Tri-2 pad out at the "M" line on the right side of that picture.
Friday was low/mid power rockets, and I started out with my "Smokin' Nike":
It flew on an F67-6, which was a bit under powered for that rocket. I added an Estes altimeter to this flight, and several others that day, but couldn't get any of them to read.
I also flew five other rockets that day, Tommy 2.5 on an F35, it's the third rebuild on a D region tomahawk, Estes Eliminator on an E12-8, LOC Viper 3 on three E12's, Estes Argent dual deploy on a G125, and an old rocket we picked up years ago at Dean Tucker's estate sale that we flew on an old Vulcan Systems F80-6, another under powered flight.
Sharon flew three rockets, An Estes Magician on an E12-6, an Estes Highflyer XL on an E18-7 and an Aerotech Arreaux on a G77-10. Once again, her workload prevented her from prepping many rockets.
Saturday, I started early with my Formula 54/75, flying on a research 54/2000 K541 Sharon's Sparkler 2. It drag separated but landed with little body damage, but shredded the chute.
My other flights that day were a Mad Cow Avalanche on a research 54/2000 K674 Don Alexanders slow white, Fast Freddy, a Wildman 3" punisher, on a research 54/2000 K863 Not your Wimpy Red, Sharon's 3" Dark star on a 54/2550 L1278 DAW, and "Big Bad Dog", a Wildman 4" kit on a 76/6000 M2150 Not your Wimpy Red. That was my highest flight to 17,516 ft.
Sharon wasn't feeling well, and didn't fly anything on Saturday.
We started packing up Saturday after all the flying, but ran out of steam around sunset. Spent about an hour around the campfire with the other club members and crawled into our new king sized bed around 9 pm.
Sunday we finished up packing. The new trailer can convert the bottom bunk into two seats, the passenger side was packed up with launch pads, which is pictured above. The drivers side holds all the chairs, and is where Sharon sets up her office:
Both of those seats can be raised or lowered, which is convenient for Sharon's office. Adjusting it up to allow Sharon to type on her Alien laptop on the drivers side split table:
She keeps it dark to improve visibility on all three of her monitors, but can add LED strip lighting installed on the bottom edge of the bed above.
Since this was the shake down trip with the new toy hauler, we had a few glitches. The major one was a heater thermostat that decided to go offline around midnight the first night. We spend a cold (for us) morning until I figured out that I had to remove a fuse to reboot the digital thermostat and get things fired back up. In the mean time, I threw an old moving blanket on the bed to keep us warmer.
So I will close this post up with a picture of this old desert rat staring at the faulty thermostat, waiting for it to restart the heater:
