First launch at my new site

[Scott_650]

It’s been months and months and months since my last solo launch - that was MicroMaxx backyard flights of my Rocketship Games R3 Bumblebees (https://rocketshipgames.com/store/#!/Model-Rockets/c/92440315), which are great kits and great flyers, before we moved an hour and a half east to the North Canton/Louisville Ohio area. I have managed to make a couple club launches and spent a long, chilly afternoon at Silver Park in Alliance helping Rev. John build and launch dozens of Estes Gnomes with the Cub Scouts but solo launches just weren’t in the cards with everything on our plates. But after doing some scouting and intensive searches of online county and township ordinances plus park-specific rules I have a new LPR launch site just ten minutes from home! At least until soccer season kicks off in the spring since the park I’m using is pretty much a big youth soccer and baseball complex - but until then the soccer goals are all stacked out of the way leaving over 40 acres of flat, open treeless grass! I kept today’s launch simple since along with rockets I’m back to running regularly and I had 3-ish miles on my training schedule, so just three rockets were prepped: my just finished Rocketarium/ARG 3X13mm Trident (a close copy of an EnerJet 2250 design), my Estes Classic Series #3033 Twister (first balsa nose cone that I did as a BAR that turned out just about perfect!) and my Estes Classic Series #3027 Satellite Interceptor. The winds were about as minimal as they get here in Stark County - 3 mph with 6 mph gusts - but I still used the smallest nylon chute I have, my little 9 incher, which worked perfectly on the two nominal launches out of three attempts. Attempt one was less than nominal - I was concerned that my NiMH rechargeable batteries in the PSII Controller were a little flat, and they were, so only one of the three A10 motors in the Trident fired - the Trident did a short hop to about 20 feet, then dropped to the soft turf for a damage-free “ground test” ejection. I didn’t bring any additional motors and thought about trying a two motor launch with the spent motor as ballast but decided not to. The Twister and Satellite Interceptor launched clean and straight (well, the Twister spun as designed but you know what I mean ) with nice easy walks to the downed rockets.

The field is, by the safety code, big enough for larger rockets but I think I’ll keep it to C motors and smaller - I really don’t want to land rockets on any of the adjacent private property or hang any in the trees on the park border since being a good neighbor is especially important on community land - which isn’t a problem since I have plenty of smaller rockets. I don’t usually launch many of my smaller rockets at club launches, after making the long drive I’d rather take advantage of the big club fields and send my bigger stuff higher, so this is a great place to fly my smaller models.

Sorry there’s no pix - juggling my phone and controller isn’t my idea of fun.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Congrats, that sounds wonderful. I am scouting too, and if you head east just over the line from Chester, W Va and East Liverpool, OH, you'll find the most wondrous site your eyes ever beheld in this area -however, permissions have yet to be obtained and environmental remediation is still in progress - but I haven't seen a treeless site this big since I was in eastern Montana last year! This one is owned by a utility and I really hope, maybe with some folks here, to have a tri-state area hobby site with some corporate backup. I know they are leasing some of the land for crops and like I said, the former lakebed is still drying up and gas vents are in place, but if we are fortunate... I mean, the minimum distance between trees east-to-west was 4800' and N-S on the order of 8000' or better. I was flabbergasted, but it was a settling pond for a coal power station and they shut that station down. I hope, I hope I hope! I just have to find some time to make some inquiries!

 

[Scott_650]

…east just over the line from Chester, W Va and East Liverpool, OH, you'll find the most wondrous site your eyes ever beheld in this area…

I know where you mean, the Little Blue Run Lake site - my family is (mostly) in Columbiana County and my younger brother lives in Chester. I grew up in the Rogers area west of East Liverpool (yes I’ve been to the Rogers Sale but it was over 30 years ago…). Saw my first <ahem> “adult” movie at the Hilltop Drive-In and bought a lot of booze in Chester while WVA was still an 18 state (all we could legally get in Ohio then was low power beer) . Hopefully they get the environmental stuff done and allow access. FirstEnergy really did a dirty deed to the locals with Little Blue Run “Lake” - all that coal ash slurry and scrubber residue from the Bruce Mansfield plant is pretty nasty stuff. Do you happen to know what they’re doing for the remediation? Even if they can get things sealed and stable it’s not likely there’ll ever be any reforestation so all that open area would make a great off-road park as well as the best launch site ever!

In the meantime, if you don’t already know, there’s an R/C flying field at Raccoon Creek SP and if there’s nobody flying all you have to do is stop at the office, show them your NAR or Tripoli membership card and you can use the field. It’s not real big but big enough for smaller stuff.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Scott:

So you are quite familiar! We were nearly neighbors at one time - I used to roller skate at the Hookstown rink when I was a kid, more than 50 years back, we lived over near Aliquippa. And of course I've been to the Rogers flea market, and spent plenty of time at Das Dutch House and Sheely's and we've pretty much had the course with Shaker Woods. My daughter got her first Golden Retriever from the breeder on the west side of the lake; incredibly, they still seem to be there, and that was like 30-some years ago! And yeah, I checked out the R/C airport, but as you say, you'd better not go too high over there unless you have a rocket-retrieving chimpanzee for a pet.

No, I don't know what they are doing for Little Blue. They do seem to be sealing it, there are passive gas vents scattered across what used to be the lake bottom, and it looks like they are indeed laying a sealing layer of dirt over it. It's still pretty swampy, it seems, but we did just have 3/4" of rain the day before I went out. And yeah, that "water" was nasty stuff; I think the color came from cobalt. But I live next to a virtual mountain made of fly ash. It must be a different process at the station that used to be near my place as the ash was dry, or just dampened to keep it from blowing. I don't know why they needed the lake. One can only hope it didn't get into the ground water but that seems a bit Pollyanna-ish of me to think that!

The only drawback that I can see to the site is that for certain, it is under the flight path for arrivals from the northwest into Pittsburgh International - I've looked down on the area many times as I was coming home. So I don't know what kind of waiver the site could get. But shoot - even if you could only get 3000', you could launch in a hurricane and not loose the thing!

My naive, wild-eyed vision would be to pitch it to FE as a community investment, all purpose open area - we could as you say, share it with R/C ground and air clubs, off-roaders, and so on. Local schools could have field trips, some of the local clubs could offer to teach middle schoolers on up to the A/P calc & physics students - there is so, so much more going on in rocketry since I was a kid, and for them to support the whole STEM thing in such a wholesome way would be great in my view. Just the electronics, cameras, GPS, or other locators are a whole area of work in themselves!

Here's how it looked the day I was there (too many pictures to load them all):

The second one fits on the left side of the first, an dthere are two more to complete the panorama, and they are just as wide open. So I'm cautiously excited! Here's hoping we don't get shot down on the first go around!

 

[Scott_650]

The only drawback that I can see to the site is that for certain, it is under the flight path for arrivals from the northwest into Pittsburgh International - I've looked down on the area many times as I was coming home. So I don't know what kind of waiver the site could get. But shoot - even if you could only get 3000', you could launch in a hurricane and not loose the thing!

My naive, wild-eyed vision would be to pitch it to FE as a community investment, all purpose open area - we could as you say, share it with R/C ground and air clubs, off-roaders, and so on. Local schools could have field trips, some of the local clubs could offer to teach middle schoolers on up to the A/P calc & physics students - there is so, so much more going on in rocketry since I was a kid, and for them to support the whole STEM thing in such a wholesome way would be great in my view. Just the electronics, cameras, GPS, or other locators are a whole area of work in themselves!

So I'm cautiously excited! Here's hoping we don't get shot down on the first go around!

Fingers crossed - all that open space just 1.5 hrs away! Plus PSC’s Grove City field and my club’s site near South Amherst - both 1.5 hrs away too. There shouldn’t be a single good weather weekend without a launch…

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Yessir, and I didn't mean to hijack your thread... PSC's Grove City field is an hour from me, so not something I can do that often... TRA and SHARC have fields south of Pittsburgh, and that's a haul, too. But we could all launch here, it's fairly central for the lot of us!

 

[Scott_650]

Yessir, and I didn't mean to hijack your thread... PSC's Grove City field is an hour from me, so not something I can do that often... TRA and SHARC have fields south of Pittsburgh, and that's a haul, too. But we could all launch here, it's fairly central for the lot of us!

Hey Tom, any update on the Little Blue Run site?

 

[Blast it Tom!]

No, I kinda asked for help from the gang here over on the 2022 goals thread. But I have to try to find a way to make this happen. Down by the dam there's a solid 1 mile by 1 mile or more area... where else would you EVER find an area like that around these parts?

Thanks for checking in!

 

[Scott_650]

No, I kinda asked for help from the gang here over on the 2022 goals thread. But I have to try to find a way to make this happen. Down by the dam there's a solid 1 mile by 1 mile or more area... where else would you EVER find an area like that around these parts?

Thanks for checking in!

Good luck!