God I hate trees

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Please don't even joke about that...my neighbor's brother died after climbing a tree to get a friend's RC plane out if it. Rockets and rc planes are replaceable... people not so much. :(
Risky business.
I asked a friend to help me with a recovery once, after the bow attempt failed.
He was an experienced trimmer climber who did it for a living for local government.
He was willing and brought his gear but after he saw the tree declined to go up.
Too-much dead and too-many splits to climb safely.
No argument from me, better safe than sorry. It would have been in his range though.
 
I have walked right under the shock cord in tall corn.
Just by chance I picked-up the faint smell of burnt BP and started looking up in the area.
The rocket was strung across 18 feet of corn.
I found it by smell because I sure couldn't see it!
I had a similar situation... However, I didn't walk under the rocket. There was a wind, and I had a guess of where it was in the corn, I happened to smell the BP smoke, and pointed my nose in that direction... it was about 35' away from where I started looking.
 
Extension ladder & heavy rope with hook got it. Dropped the rocket. Check. Dropped the rope. Check.

Stepped off the ladder 4 rungs too far up from the ground & clocked myself pretty good.
OUCH!!! Glad you got the rocket back though.
 
We've become proficient at extracting rockets out of trees using the PVC tube method.



It tooks weeks to get the Exocet out of the apex of a large Monkeypod tree. We finally zip tied poles together with a screw on the end.

 
We've become proficient at extracting rockets out of trees using the PVC tube method.



It tooks weeks to get the Exocet out of the apex of a large Monkeypod tree. We finally zip tied poles together with a screw on the end.


I saw the post, and read it w/o seeing who posted this message... I saw the word "Monkeypod" and thought? Who is launching in Hawaii? rklapp? Yup!

The vast majority of Americans have absolutely ZERO clue what a monkeypod tree is, unless you've spent time living or staying in the islands.

My first language as a keki was Hawaiian Pidgin English (which makes it a Creole language). I lost my accent and nearly all of my vocabulary when my family moved back to the Mainland when I was at the age of 6. However, I can put on a fairly good impression of it when the need arises. It made for fun times at Crazy Shirts ;). Me reading the the 10 Commandments in Pidgin, the confused look on the cashier's face as she looked at the pale fat Haole. It prompted her into asking "You from da Islands Cuz?". Or the time I was nearly adopted (at the age of 40) by the staff at the Hotel Hanna Maui (That was fun... Nice people there).
 
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I saw the post, and read it w/o seeing who posted this message... I saw the word "Monkeypod" and thought? Who is launching in Hawaii? rklapp? Yup!

The vast majority of Americans have absolutely ZERO clue what a monkeypod tree is, unless you've spent time living or staying in the islands.

My first language as a keki was Hawaiian Pidgin English (which makes it a Creole language). I lost my accent and nearly all of my vocabulary when my family moved back to the Mainland when I was at the age of 6. However, I can put on a fairly good impression of it when the need arises. It made for fun times at Crazy Shirts ;). Me reading the the 10 Commandments in Pidgin, the confused look on the cashier's face as she looked at the pale fat Haole. It prompted her into asking "You from da Islands Cuz?". Or the time I was nearly adopted (at the age of 40) by the staff at the Hotel Hanna Maui (That was fun... Nice people there).
For some reason, that really warms my heart.
 
I haven't seen a tree on any launch site I've been to in the last couple of years.😝. OK there are a few at Argonia, but they're far far away, like a couple of sections. We like our lakes dry out west, though Lucerne seems to have delusions of becoming a real lake again every spring. Our hazard is the wind...upper level winds can carry a 15K flight a few miles.
 
Possibly. Though if you're a native Pittsburgher, I'm surprised you didn't say "jaggers" instead of blackberries! I have about every type of thorny bramble available on my place, plenty of poison ivy, and samples of almost any type of vine you could ask for - including some with jaggers on them! I can see why you're sinking in the quicksand of HPR! Pittsburgh Space Command flies up at Grove City where there's room and a waiver, and I know there's another group around here (SHARC - South Hills Area Rocketry Club) that flies down south of the city a ways, I think at Traxas Farms. But that' a long haul for what I consider a "Oh, cool, it's a nice day with low winds, let's go!" sort of activity. Then you plan a weekend club launch and end up with wind, rain, plagues of locusts, whatever... I dunno, that's the tough part of this sport.
 
We might be neighbors. In addition to trees, in the summer there's the blackberries, ticks, and poison ivy...
Don't forget the skeeters in the summer and the blasted humidity.And bees and the stinking house flies.Where do you live?I used to live in Wilkes- Barre but now I live in Pittston.
 
We might be neighbors. In addition to trees, in the summer there's the blackberries, ticks, and poison ivy...
tOD
around here in NC they have a plant called Sting Weed if you brush across it with short pants or bare arms your skin will feel
like it is on fire ! Also there is the "Devils Walking Stick" with thorns about 2 -3 inch long and when you hit one of them you
know you have been stuck !! o_O that's on top of the snakes and wasp / hornet nests
 
We don't have any of those nasties. It took 29 years before I got stung by a scorpion. I've had worse wasp stings. And I've never seen a rattle snake around here. Only a couple of Gopher snakes. The worse bite I've had was a Black Widow on July 11, 2019 in northern California. That really screwed up my body. I still have neurological problems from that bite. The venom is a neuro-toxin. I shouldn't have hit the golf ball into the bushes anyway. From now on if the ball goes in the weeds it's going to stay there.
 
We don't have any of those nasties. It took 29 years before I got stung by a scorpion. I've had worse wasp stings. And I've never seen a rattle snake around here. Only a couple of Gopher snakes. The worse bite I've had was a Black Widow on July 11, 2019 in northern California. That really screwed up my body. I still have neurological problems from that bite. The venom is a neuro-toxin. I shouldn't have hit the golf ball into the bushes anyway. From now on if the ball goes in the weeds it's going to stay there.
I was driving to Front Site for a client visit about 10 years ago. On the road there, I kept seeing little dark things crossing the road. I slowed down and realized they were tarantulas. I had a box and managed to capture one. I took it home to Vegas and kept it for a couple days. I eventually released it up north. In the 5 years I lived there, I never saw a scorpion but heard of the infestations near Highland Hills.
 
I was driving to Front Site for a client visit about 10 years ago. On the road there, I kept seeing little dark things crossing the road. I slowed down and realized they were tarantulas. I had a box and managed to capture one. I took it home to Vegas and kept it for a couple days. I eventually released it up north. In the 5 years I lived there, I never saw a scorpion but heard of the infestations near Highland Hills.
My dad emigrated here from the Middle East in the early 50's and he used to tell us about how the scorpions would come out at night and gather in huge depressions in the sand and that it was mainly young children and the elderly that were susceptible to a dangerous sting.I'm just glad we don't have to deal with them in PA, they give me the creeps as it is.
 
I guess you are not a tree hugger.
Living in Pennsylvania I've always liked the trees and mountains but when it comes to rockets it's an altogether different story.Where I live it's hard to turn around without bumping into a tree, and most of the flat land is down around the southern part of the state which I don't have access to because I don't have transportation.Flying around here has always been quite an adventure, and the space i used for many years is no longer available.It was really convenient because it was only a ten minute walk from my house.
 
Living in Pennsylvania I've always liked the trees and mountains but when it comes to rockets it's an altogether different story.Where I live it's hard to turn around without bumping into a tree, and most of the flat land is down around the southern part of the state which I don't have access to because I don't have transportation.Flying around here has always been quite an adventure, and the space i used for many years is no longer available.It was really convenient because it was only a ten minute walk from my house.

Just messing with you. I am from WV but have moved to GA. I love trees but would prefer my rocks to stay clear of them.
 
Just messing with you. I am from WV but have moved to GA. I love trees but would prefer my rocks to stay clear of them.
Yeah, I know.West Virginia is pretty similar to what it's like up here.If remember correctly Homer Hickam was from West Virginia.I'm quite familiar with a lot of the aspects of his story because I live in the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern Pennsylvania, which is right smack dab in the middle of coal country.One of the only differences is that they were mining bituminous coal whereas it's anthracite coal here, the largest anthracite fields in the world.However the Knox Mining Disaster ended all deep mining here in 1959, two years before I was born.
 
I LOVE trees, except under two circumstances:
1.) When a tree eats one of my rockets. Bad, very bad.
2.) When a tree takes down a power line and deprives people (sometimes thousands of people) of electricity. I just concluded a 17-year career managing power projects (power lines and substations), and I take it personally when a tree takes down a power asset. Doubly so when strident community pushback interfered with proper vegetation management, and innocent members of society pay the price.
Bob Schultz
 
Well, I just got back from a few days in Hobbs, NM. Talk about flat, and I mean flat treeless ground, miles of it... But the wind! Well, one day at least. It occurred to me that my little pipsqueak rockets going up 500' to 1000' out there would look like a little kids' stomp rocket around here. 500 feet?! Big deal! It's just the scale of the sky, so huge, and then you have this little LPR go phhhht! and 30-40 second later it's back on the ground. One can easily see why HPR gets a good following in such areas!
 
Major tree lover here (in my life as a human being on this planet).

But I too have had my "grrrrr, gol'dang tree!" moments in my rocketry life as well.

However, my own "trees as nemesis" moments in my fly-fishing life FAR outweigh any problems I've had while flying rockets.
Most fishing days, I "catch" way more trees/shrubs/bushes/etc. than fish on a given outing. Heck, even just hiking in to the water presents fly/line/rod eating challenges sometimes. Losing (even temporarily) the occasional rocket now and then by comparison ain't no thing.

s6
 


0:34 into the video. Looks like y'all need to step up your tree recovery game...


Why didn't I think to use my helicopter for retrieval??? :)

@#$%^ &*())_))(* $%^&* #$%^& @#$%^ #$%^&
View attachment 471487

Get several PVC or wood poles, overlap about 2 feet, have a screw and/or sticky tape on the end, try to snag the shock cord and wrap around until it's secure. Should pull easily out of the tree if using rubber or elastic cord. If Kevlar, you'll have to break something. Good luck...
 
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