Ah , another day from my precious holiday spent with the lads unleashing our Weapons Of Height Addiction. Well I say "our" when actually only Alan and Mark had any rockets to fly !
Alan had brought his now trusty Code Red "RTF" , and his two Estes X-Flier "Launchables". Mark had tagged along with his Estes Missile Command Set "RTF" , and a Fireflash "Launchable".
So , 6 Rockets in all....... so lets see , how did we do ?
Well , first up was the Code Red , this allegedly being the least altitude capable of the group , and so being a good "sighting" Rocket for our limited range. The bird flew very well , nice clean flight , quite a pop on Ejection and a partially severed chute line , but the chute clung on and the Rocket landed about 20 meters from the pad. The wind was probably no more than 5mph and this first launch and recovery bore this out.
Launch 2 was the US Navy rocket from the Missile Command Set. Beautiful flight on a C6-7 must of been approaching 1000ft like the specs said , however on ejection disaster ! It was quite obvious that the shock cord had failed , the BT was in free fall , the nosecone and chute on the other hand drifted and drifted and .... well .... drifted ! Such was the lack of weight the nosecone travelled approximately 500m from the launch site with hardly a breeze ! The shock cord was found to be severed at the point it met the BT ...... inadequate wadding ?
Launch 3 was Alans first X-Flier. The flight was awesome ! Again on a C-6 this just went and went. Eyes gazed heavenward , necks and backs arched , and still it went up and up, to a guesstimate 1000ft ! Then pffffft , the ejection happened , the chute deployed and down she came ........ nice ..... a fair bit of drift , again 400-500m ..... so , executive decision time ...... put some holes in the chutes !!
Launch 4 ... oh dear ....... Marks Fireflash ..... this 1 meter tall beasty sat on the pad ominously. It had been made to spec from the manual, so it should be fine ....... shouldnt it ?! Well , I guess the Titanic was buillt to spec too ...... but that didnt help ! Well , this thing took off , and gave this beautiful graceful arc sideways. I cant quote the swear words here , particularly as we saw this nose heavy dart begin to list to horizontal , then gently into a dive ....... a brief , but what seemed infinite pause , then miraculously , the ejection fired , the nose and main body seperated ..... and the chute wandered off on its own , never to be seen again , presumably missing its lines ...... The Nose did what Noses do best ..... nosedived , two inches into the soft sand, the main body lying alongside. No Damage but no chute !
Launch 5 , the second X-Flier now and with less chute surface area. Again a lovely vertical launch , again a nice deployment of the chute and again we presume to the spec height of 1000ft. Less drift on the return to earth this time , but still lots ! We are gonna need a bigger range !!
Flight 6 was a rerun of the Fireflash. We had decided that a slightly off vertical launch rod caused the previous cardiac inducing recreation of an ICBM flight , so with this fixed it was time to try again. This time a beauiful but less altitude than expected flight on a C6 motor. Rocket reached apogee , then flipped round , its nose heavy element leading the retreat to earth. Then the ejection fired off ! The shock cord was indeed shocked ! The Chute did a vanishing act (again !) and the nose tried to dig its way to Australia. The main body was flung away and landed harmlessly in the long grass.
So after a good day the total damage was some severed chute Lines on Code Red , a temporarily damaged SC on MCom1 , and the 2 lost parachutes from the Fireflash. The plus side was gaining more experience ......
Paul
Alan had brought his now trusty Code Red "RTF" , and his two Estes X-Flier "Launchables". Mark had tagged along with his Estes Missile Command Set "RTF" , and a Fireflash "Launchable".
So , 6 Rockets in all....... so lets see , how did we do ?
Well , first up was the Code Red , this allegedly being the least altitude capable of the group , and so being a good "sighting" Rocket for our limited range. The bird flew very well , nice clean flight , quite a pop on Ejection and a partially severed chute line , but the chute clung on and the Rocket landed about 20 meters from the pad. The wind was probably no more than 5mph and this first launch and recovery bore this out.
Launch 2 was the US Navy rocket from the Missile Command Set. Beautiful flight on a C6-7 must of been approaching 1000ft like the specs said , however on ejection disaster ! It was quite obvious that the shock cord had failed , the BT was in free fall , the nosecone and chute on the other hand drifted and drifted and .... well .... drifted ! Such was the lack of weight the nosecone travelled approximately 500m from the launch site with hardly a breeze ! The shock cord was found to be severed at the point it met the BT ...... inadequate wadding ?
Launch 3 was Alans first X-Flier. The flight was awesome ! Again on a C-6 this just went and went. Eyes gazed heavenward , necks and backs arched , and still it went up and up, to a guesstimate 1000ft ! Then pffffft , the ejection happened , the chute deployed and down she came ........ nice ..... a fair bit of drift , again 400-500m ..... so , executive decision time ...... put some holes in the chutes !!
Launch 4 ... oh dear ....... Marks Fireflash ..... this 1 meter tall beasty sat on the pad ominously. It had been made to spec from the manual, so it should be fine ....... shouldnt it ?! Well , I guess the Titanic was buillt to spec too ...... but that didnt help ! Well , this thing took off , and gave this beautiful graceful arc sideways. I cant quote the swear words here , particularly as we saw this nose heavy dart begin to list to horizontal , then gently into a dive ....... a brief , but what seemed infinite pause , then miraculously , the ejection fired , the nose and main body seperated ..... and the chute wandered off on its own , never to be seen again , presumably missing its lines ...... The Nose did what Noses do best ..... nosedived , two inches into the soft sand, the main body lying alongside. No Damage but no chute !
Launch 5 , the second X-Flier now and with less chute surface area. Again a lovely vertical launch , again a nice deployment of the chute and again we presume to the spec height of 1000ft. Less drift on the return to earth this time , but still lots ! We are gonna need a bigger range !!
Flight 6 was a rerun of the Fireflash. We had decided that a slightly off vertical launch rod caused the previous cardiac inducing recreation of an ICBM flight , so with this fixed it was time to try again. This time a beauiful but less altitude than expected flight on a C6 motor. Rocket reached apogee , then flipped round , its nose heavy element leading the retreat to earth. Then the ejection fired off ! The shock cord was indeed shocked ! The Chute did a vanishing act (again !) and the nose tried to dig its way to Australia. The main body was flung away and landed harmlessly in the long grass.
So after a good day the total damage was some severed chute Lines on Code Red , a temporarily damaged SC on MCom1 , and the 2 lost parachutes from the Fireflash. The plus side was gaining more experience ......
Paul