I thought I would share this since it made me smile. I've been into HPR since last summer (2022). We, (family), launch in Arizona deserts at least once a month either in Red Lake, Near Kingman AZ or in the KOFA Wildlife Refuge near Salome. Both areas are pretty desolate but nothing alike. Red Lake is a dry lake bed with visibility for miles in any direction. As long as there's no rain the bed is dry. KOFA is a true desert terrain with cactus and scrub brush all over. Visibility at KOFA is excellent except in the enchanted forests of scrub brush and cactus and walking thru these can be daunting especially at dusk with coyotes and snakes. Last summer and early fall I spent perhaps 25 hours building a LOC SWR 300 and flew it at Red Lake over the September Labor Day weekend relatively successfully on a couple A/T G67R14's, and recovered easily within two 15 minute walks. With the second launch at Red Lake, the parachute didn't open all the way and the rocket landed hard on one fin, cracking the epoxy fillet. No worries, I can fix that and at home, proceeded to dig out the damaged fin, ground all the cured epoxy out and cleaned it up for the new fin placement. When that was done, I repainted it from the green color it was to a cool metalic blue and gave it a new name: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. On October 16, '22 we drove out to KOFA about a 90 minute drive west from Phoenix. Preparing my first attempt at Level 1 Certification, I made sure everything was "perfect" or as near as I could get it, to have a successful launch and recovery. At 8:31 am, with skies clear and blue and a mild breeze from the west, I set my blue Plausible Deniability up on the pad, after going thru everything with the RSO. Time to launch, 5, 4, 3,.... and gone. I mean I had listened to most of the advice you all had given me for the previous few months about certifying as simply as possible on the smallest motor to get to about 1000 ft and recovery but...no, I had to fly to the moon on my first attempt at L1 using an A/T I-284W14 white lightning motor. And after the rocket went skyward up, up and out of sight, it never came back. Never saw an event nor never saw it come down anywhere. We searched (9 of us) for several hours over about a 3 mile circle and nothing. After all the hours and painstaking effort to make this 2-1/2" rocket do it's thing, it chose to simply leave. No recovery...no CERT. UGH. No electronics on board at that point other than a Jolly Logic Altimeter 2. And we left KOFA...sans my rocket. I thought about what's next and decided to remake the same rocket, but better this time. And I did. I remade it and put another JL Alt 2 in it with an electronics beacon and an air tag...hoping this time to find it with my I phone. I launched in November at Red Lake with this new SWR 300 (yellow this time), and Certified L1. But I kept thinking about the Blue P/D and where it might have gone.
Long story made slightly shorter...I went solo to KOFA in December and Certified L2 on a scratch designed (not fully painted), and built a 6', 2.5" on a J500, and I again looked for Blue P/D while walking to recover the new L2 rocket after launch, but never saw it. On January 21st this year, we all went back to KOFA to launch as a family. While there, we met some of the others from SSS Rocketry also launching. Just before lunch, I saw one of the other rocket folks walking back from the desert with a familiar object in his hands. Yep, it was in fact, Plausible Deniability, still in tact after 3 months, still with everything in perfect shape, including paint, fins, nosecone, everything...even after weeks of rain in the area. We couldn't find it... but he could. He found it by looking up in a cactus where the rocket had impaled itself, intact, fins first into the body of the cactus. The parachute never deployed, the rocket never parted but it came down in one piece and landed in the cactus...whole. And here we are today, with the blue SWR intact, in my office on the shelf as a memento to "what's possible". I truly love this sport and plan to continue to design and build my own rockets, helping others as I can along the way.
Long story made slightly shorter...I went solo to KOFA in December and Certified L2 on a scratch designed (not fully painted), and built a 6', 2.5" on a J500, and I again looked for Blue P/D while walking to recover the new L2 rocket after launch, but never saw it. On January 21st this year, we all went back to KOFA to launch as a family. While there, we met some of the others from SSS Rocketry also launching. Just before lunch, I saw one of the other rocket folks walking back from the desert with a familiar object in his hands. Yep, it was in fact, Plausible Deniability, still in tact after 3 months, still with everything in perfect shape, including paint, fins, nosecone, everything...even after weeks of rain in the area. We couldn't find it... but he could. He found it by looking up in a cactus where the rocket had impaled itself, intact, fins first into the body of the cactus. The parachute never deployed, the rocket never parted but it came down in one piece and landed in the cactus...whole. And here we are today, with the blue SWR intact, in my office on the shelf as a memento to "what's possible". I truly love this sport and plan to continue to design and build my own rockets, helping others as I can along the way.
