A5tr0 An0n
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2012
- Messages
- 521
- Reaction score
- 10
Introduction:
As the title might state, this thread is a post flight summary of one long and distant weekend in which a fair amount of Ns were released. Two weekends ago Prophecy and I got the chance to fly three projects out in the desserts of NM. Two of these projects had been previously scrubbed flights (due to the weather), planned for BALLS23 and have since been "sitting around," taking up shop space. A day following BALLS23 Prophecy and I applied for a high altitude wavier in NM so we wouldn't have to wait a year to fly; this ended up taking about 6 months to get but it was worth the wait.
Since the original construction of these vehicles data has been lost and consequently the thread will not be as informative as some of you might like.
The Journey:
The wavier opened up on Saturday at 0800, so naturally we wanted to get onto the field Friday to setup all the GSE and get settled in. We started the 12 hour drive to the field on Thursday night at 2130; turns out it took us much longer than 12 hours to get there. We ended up meeting with John Demar and Jim Jarvis at John's shop on Friday around 1730 for some last minute adjustments... like building a rail for the 5 inch vehicle. It only made sense, seeing as we didn't have one built yet and launch was less than a day away. Anyways due to this and some other things we ended up all headed out to the field probably around 2000ish (dark). Using the car headlights we were able to get most of the GSE setup in the dark and head back to find a hotel and crash for a couple of hours prior to the scheduled launch.
Below are some photographs of the journey out.
Almost in NM... not.
Dessert sunsets.
Nothing better than GSE setup at night.
The next mornings drive out to the field.
The following morning field arrival photo.
Seeing as I didn't plan on flying a 38mm load anytime soon and I was bored... so I decided to take some 5.56 to it, with the help of some friends.
Yeah...
Attack of the bulls.
Cool clouds on the way back home.
Conclusion:
We were able to get all three flights up in two days, which is a accomplishment in itself. With that being said all three flights did not go 100% as planned. However skills were developed, knowledge was acquired, and the trip was overall good. With these projects out of the way, prophecy and I can start to work on another planned project and add to them from the information gained from these flights.
We would like to thank Thomas Kindig, Kent Newman, John Demar, Jim Jarvis, and Mac Heller for their support and help in many different ways.
In the following three thread posts I will describe each flight in more detail, in chronological order with each post representing a flight. Thanks for stopping by and in conclusion all I can say is it is nice to have these rockets/flights out of the way.
Flight On with Flight 1 --> Next Post
As the title might state, this thread is a post flight summary of one long and distant weekend in which a fair amount of Ns were released. Two weekends ago Prophecy and I got the chance to fly three projects out in the desserts of NM. Two of these projects had been previously scrubbed flights (due to the weather), planned for BALLS23 and have since been "sitting around," taking up shop space. A day following BALLS23 Prophecy and I applied for a high altitude wavier in NM so we wouldn't have to wait a year to fly; this ended up taking about 6 months to get but it was worth the wait.
Since the original construction of these vehicles data has been lost and consequently the thread will not be as informative as some of you might like.
The Journey:
The wavier opened up on Saturday at 0800, so naturally we wanted to get onto the field Friday to setup all the GSE and get settled in. We started the 12 hour drive to the field on Thursday night at 2130; turns out it took us much longer than 12 hours to get there. We ended up meeting with John Demar and Jim Jarvis at John's shop on Friday around 1730 for some last minute adjustments... like building a rail for the 5 inch vehicle. It only made sense, seeing as we didn't have one built yet and launch was less than a day away. Anyways due to this and some other things we ended up all headed out to the field probably around 2000ish (dark). Using the car headlights we were able to get most of the GSE setup in the dark and head back to find a hotel and crash for a couple of hours prior to the scheduled launch.
Below are some photographs of the journey out.
Almost in NM... not.
Dessert sunsets.
Nothing better than GSE setup at night.
The next mornings drive out to the field.
The following morning field arrival photo.
Seeing as I didn't plan on flying a 38mm load anytime soon and I was bored... so I decided to take some 5.56 to it, with the help of some friends.
Yeah...
Attack of the bulls.
Cool clouds on the way back home.
Conclusion:
We were able to get all three flights up in two days, which is a accomplishment in itself. With that being said all three flights did not go 100% as planned. However skills were developed, knowledge was acquired, and the trip was overall good. With these projects out of the way, prophecy and I can start to work on another planned project and add to them from the information gained from these flights.
We would like to thank Thomas Kindig, Kent Newman, John Demar, Jim Jarvis, and Mac Heller for their support and help in many different ways.
In the following three thread posts I will describe each flight in more detail, in chronological order with each post representing a flight. Thanks for stopping by and in conclusion all I can say is it is nice to have these rockets/flights out of the way.
Flight On with Flight 1 --> Next Post
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