SatelliteInterceptor
03-08-2008, 09:26 AM
03/06/08 Launch Report - I live on Long Island and unfortunetely there are not many places big enough to launch rockets here anymore. The Island, which is 118 miles long, has been pretty extensively developed in the past 25 to 30 years. When I was a kid, it was a lot easier to find a field to fly at. Even our official rocket club of Long Island currently has no field to fly at. It's pretty sad. In any event, I found a concrete parking lot that is pretty large. I don't normally fly rockets off of concrete, because I don't feel like repairing the damage caused by them hitting the cement. I didn't know if I would get kicked out by the park police so I only brought 1 rocket with me - my Alpha III that I built in 2003 (never flown). It has plastic fins as you all well know, so it would be relatively safe hitting hard surfaces. The parking lot was a perfect square which measures 1,000 feet from north to south and 1,000 feet from east to west. It's good enough for A, B & C launches in low wind. I made my own electrical launch system back in the 1970's and I still use it today. I popped open the hood of my car and connected the wires to my car's battery. Parks Department work vehicles kept going by but none of them said anything to me. Once I popped the hood up, it only took a minute for one of them to come over to me. He asked me if my car battery was dead. I said "no" and thanked him and he drove away. I managed to launch the Alpha 3 times. Each time, I waited until the parking lot was void of any motor vehicles. The first flight was straight and true. The parachute ejected, but it did not completely unfold. It came down relatively slow and I was able to catch it about 100 feet from the pad. The temperature was about 35 degrees that day and the wind was about 10 M.P.H. My 2nd launch, again, was straight and true. The parachute ejected flawlessly and the rocket drifted. I parked my car in the exact center of the parking lot (at the 500 foot mark) so I had 500 feet lee-way in any direction that the rocket chose to drift. On the 2nd launch mentioned above, the rocket drifted 483 feet from the pad (only 17 feet from the edge of the parking lot). It's a good thing it didn't go any further, because for a hundred feet or so past the lot are many pricker bushes (briar patch). If the Alpha landed in them, it would have been gone forever. I walked back to my car and another parks department truck pulled up to me and asked me if I needed a jump start. I said "no" and I clearly saw that she was aware of the launching that I had been doing so before she could speak, I asked her what are the rules on rocket launching at the park. At that moment I figured that she was going to kick me out, but she didn't. She said the parks employees won't kick me out, but the New York State Park Police probably would. Up to this point I had still not seen a cop yet (thank God). For my 3rd and final launch I tilted my home-made launch pad into the wind. The flight was once again, straight and true. The rocket drifted only about 300 feet from the pad this time. I carried it back to the car and cleaned up all of my launch supplies. Just as I loaded everything into my car and closed the trunk and the doors, a cop pulled into the parking lot and started heading in my direction. I got a little tense, but luckily he kept on driving right past me. It was a good day for launching. I will head back there in a week or so to do it again. There were no signs at the park stating that rockets or planes couldn't be flown there, so maybe I won't get kicked out in the future. This isn't a spectacular launch report, but I wanted to share it with everyone on this forum anyway. Hopefully the rocket club will get a field to launch at soon, because I'm getting tired of sneaking around like this.