trees!

[radiO]

i hate them! that is all.

 

[dr wogz]

Hence why all feild kits should contain a chain saw!!

 

[radiO]

lol!

roger that!

 

[graylensman]

Rmember the scene in the original <i>Rollerball</i> - the one where everyone got messed up at a party and then went outside with ray guns and set the trees on fire? Wonder if that got written by a rocketeer...

 

[radiO]

no, but that makes me want to see it!

 

[DJ Delorie]

Grrr, trees just ate one of our micromaxx rockets. Sort of. My son was doing the setup, and aimed the launch rod towards the woods a little by mistake. The rocket is on the ground - somewhere amongst the trees - waiting to be found.

 

[vjp]

It's the tree's way of claiming their own.

Balsa, paper, cardboard....

It also explains the occasional cow snacking on a rocket. (The glue).

 

[DJ Delorie]

Trees reclaiming plastic rockets? Wow, that's a long memory.

 

[radiO]

this makes me wonder, anyone have any tips for tools to snag rockets out of trees? the one from toady is a gorgeous scratch build that i REALLY want back! it's ONLY up 40' or so. maybe bamboo sticks and duct tape???

 

[vjp]

40 feet is pretty high.

There are extension poles you can buy at Home Depot for painting, and even longer poles in the garden department for pruning trees, etc. But 40' is probably too high even for them.

I once drew up plans of the back of a napkin for a "rocket rescue device", basically either (a) a kite or (b) a large tethered helium balloon, from which was suspended a line with a treble hook at the bottom (along with a small weight for ballast). The idea was, let the wind carry the balloon/kite over the rocket, maneuvering ones self so that the treble hook caught the rocket's chute or shock cord. Once caught, pull until the rocket is free from the tree's clutches.

Another idea - use a slingshot to propel a small fishing sinker with a line attached, over/across the rocket's shroud lines. Attach a treble hook to one end of the line and pull from the other end.

Yet another idea - become a genius, then genetically engineer trees that possess rudimentary intelligence and can obey simple commands like "sit", "lay down", "give me back my rocket", etc.

On second thought, that first plan is a little far-fetched.

 

[flying_silverad]

Just added this to my tool kit....

 

[karatekicker271]

Our tool is....


My dad has a friend that works for DUKE Power ( a power company of course) and the extention poles they use to fix wires or something, well he knew me and my dad were into rocketry, and he got us a spare "pogo sticks" wich is just a big extendable stick they use that gets to about 35 feet, so with armspand...

 

[moocrew]

climbing works....or even cherry pickers!
yes cherry pickers are the most wonderful invention ever.

 

[rabidsheeep]

i spent 3 hours at a park nearby with a rope and a rock trying to shake a rocket loose once... still is stuck up there

ive never lost a (kit) rocket from a cato, or an explosion or something going wrong... just from trees...

 

[AlexM]

At TARC, this team recovered their rocket from a 60 foot high tree with two poles and a lot of effort.

 

[rstaff3]

I has a rocket that was higher than our club's grappling pole would reach. Somehow vjp got part of it down. Later, my son climbed the tree part way, and I handed him the pole. That extra height recovered the rest

Aside: chain saws work but tend to piss off landowners and the county parks ppl

OT:

I've had more problems with tall corn and grass than trees.

 

[dr wogz]

Kids too, can be a problem.

I launched my 'Skywriter' pencil rocket. wind took it way down feild (tall grass)

the nephew, 6yr old, was in the 'recovery team' and on his walk back, dicovered he could swing teh rocket through the grass, shaking up bugs and seeds. He also discovered that if he held teh nosecone and trailed teh rocket behind him, the grass would 'grab it' and eventuall let go with a snap!

 

[low flyer]

Launched my Stars and Stripes twice on the Fourth of July but on second flight shifting winds put it in the trees. Found it several days later hanging from a branch 25 feet up. I used a tape measure with a paper clip shaped into a hook taped to the end to drag it out of the tree. Kind of tricky to do with the tape wobbling around in the air but I got my rocket back. And a tape measure is easy enough to keep in your kit.

 

[Bowhunter]

Trees Eat Rockets.............They Suck!!!!!! in our rockets and EAT THEM


:kill:

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by radiO
this makes me wonder, anyone have any tips for tools to snag rockets out of trees? the one from toady is a gorgeous scratch build that i REALLY want back! it's ONLY up 40' or so. maybe bamboo sticks and duct tape???

I had a pet pear tree on my parents' farm. To pick the fruit before it fell, I got a tool that was sort of a cage with tines on one side, attached to a long pole. Imagine a basket made of stiff wire or thin rod, something like the protector cage on a shop light. The entire bottom half is present, but only one side of the top half. The wires/rods of the top portion are bent over as if to meet the ones that would come from the missing side, but they're just pointed, and look like half-crooked fingers.

The rod was 12 feet long, telescoping to (almost) 24 feet.

Ypu push it up so the basket is under the fruit, and rake it against the branch. That pulls the fruit off the branch and it drops into the basket.

Slow going for a tree full of fruit. With some risk to the shrouds, it'd probably work on a rocket.

 

[GlennW]

At our club's field we have one tree that has so many rockets in it that it is known as the Christmas tree! Now what is truly insane about this is that the tree is right next to our launch pads. I don't know what genius came up with this spot to launch from but I've only been there a year so what do I know!

Glenn

 

[Adam Selene]

trees? i thought this thread was called Tres! my bad!
now i'll have to try to find my pictures from fla last spring (03) with a crew using a front loader and and a 20' pole to deprive them ret's from a meal. must have been over $100 in man/equipment hours to save a $10 rocket! but everyone involved had fun!

 

[low flyer]

Originally posted by DynaSoar
...To pick the fruit before it fell, I got a tool that was sort of a cage with tines on one side, attached to a long pole ...with some risk to the shrouds, it'd probably work on a rocket.

It sounds like a great idea but what time of year do you harvest rockets? And how do you know when they're ripe?

 

[Gus]

Only good tree is a tree which has been ground into pulp and made into kraft paper tubes.

I take it back, I kinda like them dead balsa trees too!

Learn about balsa here.

 

[rabidsheeep]

6/26/04 i launched this...

https://img21.photobucket.com/albums/v64/sheeepy/r1_goddard_going.jpg

here it is... guess where it went.

https://img21.photobucket.com/albums/v64/sheeepy/r1_right_before_the_tree.jpg

i checked today, nearly a month later, after more rain days than i can count, and more humid days (figured the glue would un-glue), and it is still stuck up there, hanging by a thread of the parachute...

 

[rstaff3]

Here's a pic of my Public Enemy Fatboy that reappeared after about 2 years living in the trees. Was purple, now grey. Anything cardboard is toast. Fins were rotten from the inside out. I may reuse them as surface mount in the rebuild. Plastic cone, tail cone, lugs and the chute are fine. The big shock is the chute is in great condition. I had patched it numerous times with self-adhesive rip-stop nylon tape form a kite store. Not one sign of the tape lifting. Amazing!

 

[rstaff3]

Originally posted by rstaff3
Here's a pic of my Public Enemy Fatboy that reappeared after about 2 years living in the trees. Was purple, now grey. Anything cardboard is toast. Fins were rotten from the inside out. I may reuse them as surface mount in the rebuild. Plastic cone, tail cone, lugs and the chute are fine. The big shock is the chute is in great condition. I had patched it numerous times with self-adhesive rip-stop nylon tape form a kite store. Not one sign of the tape lifting. Amazing!

PS Unfortunately the 38/240 motor was missing. No more comment on this.

 

[Donaldsrockets]

The only incident for me of a rocket landing in a tree is one time I launched my Custom Razor tube fin rocket on a B6-4. It went up fine, gentle arc, good altitude and deployment. This thing kinda glides down with a streamer and it came down and got snagged about 10 feet up in a tree.

I was able to get it down even though the tree really didn't want to give it up but ask me if I care. Since it's my rocket, I win.

Had it landed in the top of the tree, I probably would not have tried to get it down.

But if ANY of my HPR birds land in a tree, well lets just say that a friend of mine happens to own a chain saw. :kill:

 

[DavRedf]

Trees = natures way of controlling rockets.

You could always borrow NASA's rocket backpack and get the rockets back that way.


David