A Moment of Silence

Thanks to some strange weather conditions, and insufficient caution on my part, my L1 rocket, the Flowbee, was called home by the rocket gods on its 12th flight.

In all honesty, the loss of the JLCR, JL Altimeter 3, and 3-grain CTI case hurt more than the rocket itself.

I have two more Partizon kits in my stash, and Flowbee Mk2 will have full and proper dual deployment.

And an EggFinder, or at least a buzzer...

Edit: having a hard time linking the picture using my phone...

Ouch!

:-(

sorry to hear this

I hate losing rockets more than crashing them. Really sorry for your loss. Any chance you could still find it? Or is it definitely lost?

Yes, that sucks, sorry to hear it. What were the strange weather conditions? High winds aloft?

Missileworks T3. User friendly rocket savior

Did you remember to add your name, phone, and address (as a reminder as to who made this offering, and just in case the Gods sent the rocket to test, and inspire another to join us)?

Long story short, winds were shifted almost 180 degrees from normal, along with "swirling" and being faster than expected aloft.

We (I, especially) practice the philosophy of "bring it down fast and pop it low", so I had the Jolly set at 200'.

Unfortunately, it still drifted quite a ways while freefalling, and plopped into a corn field.

I saw it land in the (~8 ft tall) corn, and tried to visually mark the spot. Still, after an hour plus of methodically working through the corn, one row at a time, I was still unable to find it.

They won't be harvesting until October, so I'm trying to marshal a search party to make another attempt at it. So, yeah, there's a possibility still of finding it, and I'm trying not to be too discouraged.

My contact info is onboard, so if it's found by a human, rather than a harvesting machine, it might make its way home.

A screamer on the harness might have helped along with a handheld GPS with a 'Sight n' Go' feature. It allows one to shoot a line to an object. You could have shot a more accurate bearing line and kept walking till you found it. Putting a loud noisemaker on the harness will further enhance recovery chances because one can be off a bit and zero in with their ears.

Do any of your friends have a drone? I've heard that they're great for finding rockets in corn fields because of the aerial view.

I hate losing things in the rockets more than the rockets themselves. Lost two 24/40 casings back to back. I’m dreading the day I’l lose an expensive casing and my chute release. Had a LOC Zeus crash earlier this year with a chute release, Altimeter 1, and Loki 38/480 hardware. Only the Altimeter 1 was broken but only the LCD which was fixed. Rest was luckily undamaged. A guy in our club lost I think two chute releases in a row.

I lost a Partizon to the tall deep woods the same way a few years ago, drifted away. Dual deploy is the solution. That, and now I fly 75 lb fiberglass rockets and they don't drift much.

So sorry to hear this story. I lost my Leviathan in almost exactly the same way; even in the fall, the 8 foot dry corn is still thick, and we do have to respect the farmer's livlihood by taking care not to trample anything. Two of us looked for 1.5 hours, and we had a good landmark to follow, but the absolute distance out is difficult to judge. Zig-zagging through the corn rows (they are not straight or continuous) just couldn't get us there. Mine was found the next spring when the crops were gone, well shredded, along with many others lost that past fall. I still have the two halves of the shredded and squashed nose cone as a reminder on my rocket bench. I now use the JLCR and noise device to at least improve my chances of recovery. I have not lost one that way since. I am also more cautious on windy days, but we don't get that many launch days in a season, so more likely than not I will go for it as long as safety is still maintained.