Wind direction and setup

[cwbullet]

I attended a launch locally that was run by another group. I was asked to attend to provide mentorship to younger fliers. I was honored with the opportunity to give it forward.

During the set up, I notice they were flying with the wind blowing back toward the crowd. I politely asked why they set up with the crowd and cars in the particular proximity and direction to the pads.

Do you and your club change the flight line set up when the wind direction changes?

 

[tim cubbedge]

Do you and your club change the flight line set up when the wind direction changes?

No we really can’t move flight line. We ask all flyers to point their rockets away from flight line regardless of wind direction. When NEFAR had their field, they did the same.

 

[David Schwantz]

We cannot either. We fly off a sod farm and have to park on the access road. The only thing we can do is move it east or west to stay away from power line. center pivots and irrigation ditches. There are times I will NOT fly some of the bigger stuff as the wind is blowing towards crowd. Hit a car once

 

[cwbullet]

We cannot either. We fly off a sod farm and have to park on the access road. The only thing we can do is move it east or west to stay away from power line. center pivots and irrigation ditches. There are times I will NOT fly some of the bigger stuff as the wind is blowing towards crowd. Hit a car once

We fly on a sod farm also, but we have multiple fields to fly off and perpindicular "roads" to use as flight lines. I have flown in 3 different setups to avoid cars.

 

[cwbullet]

No we really can’t move flight line. We ask all flyers to point their rockets away from flight line regardless of wind direction. When NEFAR had their field, they did the same.

We do the same regardless.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

We have two locations we set the pad. The wind is either from the South, or most often, from the North. We set the pad up in the direction the wind comes from. The parking/crowd line is parallel to wind direction, but offset. We've got a wireless launch controller, so we try to maintain a minimum 100' clearance (high power). Mod rocks/ low power can move closer if they want.

 

[MClark]

We set up so sun is at our backs.
This also has approaching vehicles coming from non range side.

 

[robopup]

I like aiming rockets with a component parallel to the flight line, as opposed to only perpendicular downrange. The flight lines at the sites I fly at can't be moved, and it's not uncommon to have wind at our backs or faces. If the rocket is pointed perpendicular downrange, when the wind is at our backs the weathercocking can put it over us. Similarly, when the wind is in our face things blow back into camp. Either way not good. If it's tilted parallel, it gets things moving away from the crowd.

 

[Zeus-cat]

Our launch location is basically fixed at our high-power field. We set up in the grass strip that runs next to the stream. We can walk through the farmer's field to retrieve rockets, but we can't drive onto it. Plus we need to maintain proper distance from the barn and house. Those restrictions don't leave us with any real options on where we can set up. The rare times we launch an L or an M motor we have to put a remote pad in the field across the stream. Very limited parking and vehicle turn around spots on that side, so we don't have space to use that as a regular launch location.

We have more flexibility on set-up at our summer (low-power) field.

 

[rharshberger]

We can move our flightline to one of two positions typically depending on the wind requirements for that day ( from the SW or from the North, its rarely some other direction). We also set our rail angles based on the first few flights of the day and fliers are not allowed to change them, even our big Coker-style pad "Padzilla" has about 7.5 degrees of angle plus or minus to account for the wind and since it is usually the away cell pad rarely do we get those rockets back over the spectator area. Most common rocket to get back over the spectators are the ones off the low power rods. Do we still get occasional rockets into the spectator area...yes....and have their been even rarer close calls....yes, but we also try and ensure that both of those events are due to events beyond our control.

 

[Banzai88]

Of the 3 fields that my local club has access to, it's impossible to adjust for the wind because of safety stand-off distances from hard structures or hard roads. Because of that, we've tried to find fields where the prevailing winds work in our favor, but Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate on rocket days.

We do what we can, but if it's a choice between go or no-go, wind velocity is the determining factor, not direction. It's up to the RSO/LCO/flyer to adjust accordingly to ensure a proper margin of safety......and so far we've done a very good job of doing just that.

 

[bjphoenix]

My club uses a big cow pasture. We will set up the flight line depending on the wind direction but for some reason we end up with the flight line fairly parallel to the wind direction.