After six years, I launch a rocket. :)

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MichaelRapp

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One of the things that caused me to drop out of rocketry six years ago is that I wasn't aware of a nearby suitable field. Since then, I joined a local amateur radio club and they have their annual event at a fairly large park that is only 10 miles from my house. It's quite large -- four baseball fields and two soccer fields -- and the city seems to keep that portion mowed. Here's a Google Earth image of the field:

hbp.jpg

As I was hoping, I was the only person out there this Thanksgiving afternoon. (I'm sure during other times, I'll have to get there fairly early before the baseball and/or soccer games start or scout out portions that are further away from those fields that are safe to launch from.) The wind was more than I thought it would be....about 10 mph, but it did steady down to 4-5 mph at times.

I readied my rocket, an Estes E2X Dragonite with an A8-3 engine: my first launch in six years. Would this six-year-old A8-3 work or fizzle out on the launch pad?

onpad.jpg

After angling the launch rod into the wind slightly, I cautiously inserted the safety key into the controller and verified the red LED was glowing. I looked up to see if any aircraft were in the air (there is an private pilot airfield about 20 minutes away) and what I saw made me smile. There, in the clear blue sky 45 degrees above the horizon and right in line with my launch rod, was the crescent Moon. How fitting. :clap:

I then looked at the rocket and hit the igniter.

WOW. I had forgotten just how cool a model rocket launch is. I will never tire of that. The rocket went up (this, I have learned from much study, is a good thing), slowed, arced over, and about a second after apogee the ejection charge blew, the parachute deployed, and I watched the rocket drift over my head and land about 25 feet away.

ground.jpg


i launched once again on an A8-3. The launch went perfectly. This allayed any fears I had of my old motors being bad. I then decided to switch to a B6-4. This was a cool launch....the rocket went quite high.....not quite high enough that I lose sight of it, but nearly there. I also noted how visible the red and black color scheme made the rocket. Here's a shot just at ejection:

aftereject.jpg

I did another B6-4 and noticed that the ejection happened just at apogee. Here's a shot of the rocket drifting slowly down to about 50 feet away:

onwaydown.jpg

I thought about trying a C6-5, but with the wind and my inexperience, plus the fact that some parts of the field were still muddy from recent rains, I decided against it.

That was pretty fun. While driving home I also gave some thought as to what I want to do next. While the E2X was fun for a few flights, I can already see I'm going to get much more enjoyment of flying the rockets I build myself and see if I can get them to consistently fly straight and stable.
 
Yup! I never tire seeing any rocket launch.

Welcome back to the hobby! Kits, scratch builds, low power to high power. I love it all.


Jerome :)
 
Welcome back.
Maybe some of the other Hams might be interested in joining you?

KC8JRV Kirk
 
Sounds like a lot of fun! Congrats for getting back in the game.

BTW, unless your rocket motors have been stored in really extreme conditions of heat cycling (frozen stiff in winter, roasted in summer) or exposure to moisture, their life span should be pretty much unlimited. Many people quite regularly launch motors 20-45 years old with good reliability.
 
That's great! I understand your search for a launch site - building rockets is fun but launching them is something else.
 
That's great! I understand your search for a launch site - building rockets is fun but launching them is something else.

And recovering them? Another matter entirely...

Great thread, again, glad to see you got to launch that rocket. Me...still trying to get my launch field "ducks" lined up in a row.
 
Welcome back.
Maybe some of the other Hams might be interested in joining you?

Very possibly. I know that at least one member of my club worked in a mission control center support role on Apollo.

KT5MR
 
One of the things that caused me to drop out of rocketry six years ago is that I wasn't aware of a nearby suitable field. Since then, I joined a local amateur radio club and they have their annual event at a fairly large park that is only 10 miles from my house.
I largely abandoned model rocketry when I was a child for lack of a place to launch. My recent discovery of clubs and club launches has allowed me to get back into it again. None of the nearby launch sites are less than an hour from my home, but I am used to driving one or two hours to get to where I need to be on the weekends (mountains, desert, etc).
 
That sounds like a great day of flying! Congratulations on getting back into the hobby!

I think you did the right thing by not pushing your luck with a C6-5. That's not a big rocket, and it might go out of sight on a C!

What are you going to build next? For nice flights that don't go too high on a C motor, I like kits that are made with a 1.63" diameter. One E2X kit in that size is the Riptide. For a Skill level 1 kit in that size, you could try an Estes Patriot --- I helped my nephew make that one, and it came out looking nice and flies really well. A long time classic in that size is the Big Bertha --- I think it's kind of goofy-looking, but it grows on you. There are lots of choices in that size (and bigger!).
 
What are you going to build next? For nice flights that don't go too high on a C motor, I like kits that are made with a 1.63" diameter. One E2X kit in that size is the Riptide. For a Skill level 1 kit in that size, you could try an Estes Patriot --- I helped my nephew make that one, and it came out looking nice and flies really well. A long time classic in that size is the Big Bertha --- I think it's kind of goofy-looking, but it grows on you. There are lots of choices in that size (and bigger!).

I'm uncertain.... I have several rockets in the queue, mostly from the Estes Black Friday sale. I've got a Baby Bertha, a Cosmic Explorer, and a Reflector.

I have noticed that I am drawn to building a rocket that does a specific thing. For example, the first task in the NARTREK program of constructing a rocket that flies for a minimum duration appeals to me. (I might even try to do the TARC task -- loft an egg to a specific altitude and have a flight of a specified duration; that sounds like a fun challenge!)

Something I am itching to try is to attach one of the $25 low-res keychain cameras on a rocket and/or one of the inexpensive altimeters. However, if I'm going to start putting electronics in a rocket (and about $50 if I did altimeter plus camera), I want my construction skills and my flight experience such that I will get the rocket back. :D

Funny you should mention the Big Bertha. That's the only surviving rocket of my initial entry into rocketry. I want to construct another one, if only to show how my newly learned techniques compare to what I did back then. The rocket looks pretty awful. I didn't sand the fins....no primer....just a coat of flat black spray paint and fluorescent orange on the nose cone. I'm not even sure what glue I used to attach the fins...it doesn't look like wood glue...could be CA.

The one thing that I remember really liking about the Big Bertha was that you could watch it from liftoff to apogee, whereas the smaller rockets went poof and you spent a second or two trying to locate it in the sky.
 
It sounds like you've got some good rockets in the queue!

I agree it is fun to try to meet some challenges and goals with a flight, not just whoosh-pop. The NARTREK and TARC programs are pretty cool. I had planned on trying the NARTREK bronze, but had already bought a few MPR kits to build by the time I heard about the program, and building those kits won out over going back to LPR rockets to complete the challenge. But there are still certain NARTREK milestones I'd like to do, even if it's not to the letter of the NARTREK rules --- things like a 2-stage rocket and a cluster rocket.

I know what you mean about liking being able to watch the entire flight of the rocket to apogee. This is one of the reasons I moved on to larger rockets. One Estes kit that I always recommend to anyone interested in moving to larger rockets but who wants to stick with black powder motors is the Estes Maxi Alpha 3. It's a good-sized rocket that's not very expensive ($18 at AC supply last time I bought one). It's super easy to build. It's large enough to do some cutom decorating. And it flies really nicely on Estes D12 and E12 motors. Very nice flights that are easy to watch all the way to apogee. And for even slower flights, the E9 motors work well too --- just be sure to use a long launch rod on a calm day. That rocket is a good one for adding a payload section and flying an altimeter. It would also carry a camera with ease.
 
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