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Old 05-21-2016, 08:16 PM
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Rich Holmes Rich Holmes is offline
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Default Personal launch report: Syracuse Rocket Club, May 2016

A pretty good first Syracuse Rocket Club launch of the season today. Good turnout. Skies were overcast, but the rain held off until we were about done at around 3:30. Winds were as close to dead calm as you get.

I started off with the LOC Precision Fantom Mini that was one of Mark Riffle’s donations to the club last year, partly because Mark was there visiting from Massachusetts.



Feeling optimistic, I put a C6-5 in it — something Mark said he never did. “Do you want it back?” someone asked; “I don’t care” I replied. Then I realized I did, because it had my Top Flight Thin Mil 12″ chute in it. No worries though. It stayed in sight the whole time and came down not too far away. Very wiggly flight though.



Next I prepped my Estes The Dude. Given the lack of wind I figured this would be a great day to fly it. And it probably would have been. The Dude had trouble keeping its firm, erect form, however. I couldn’t locate the leak on the field. So that flight got scratched.

Instead, for my second flight, I got out my Estes Loadstar II. The theme for the launch was staging, and after I’d put my rocket on the pad someone reminded me the contest of the month was 2-stage spot landing, so I called it a contest flight. Rather surprisingly it came down fairly close to the pin. Our tape measure was tangled and out of commission, so we paced off distances, and mine was 29 paces. Turned out to be a winner.

Flight #3 was the scratch B3S2, another contest entry, this time for the year’s first (of 6) B streamer spot landing contest.



The good news is it landed pretty close to the target. The bad news is it got there via a motor cato.



You can see the ejected motor mount just above the sawhorse there, with the streamer flying. The explosion took out one of the rear eject motor mount rings and put a small hole in the bulkhead.





In addition the cap on the adjustable nose weight container somehow came off, and seemingly took some plastic bits with it such that it wouldn’t go on again.



The body and fins survived fine, but the rest will need rebuilding. To make matters worse, when the motor blew the B3S2 hit the rocket two rods over and knocked it to the ground, tearing its launch lugs loose. What a MESS!
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Old 05-21-2016, 08:17 PM
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Rich Holmes Rich Holmes is offline
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So to stay in the running for the contest I flew the Fantom Mini again, this time on a B4-4. A pretty lame entry but good enough. It flew more steadily this time. 78 paces from the target, I think, which was not a win but I’m not sure there was more than one other entry, so it was second or maybe third.

For my last flight I sent my Estes Big Daddy up for the first time, on a D12-3.



Good flight and recovered in good shape.



So four rockets up, one of them twice, and three recovered without damage… pretty good.
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Old 05-22-2016, 08:16 AM
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Rich Holmes Rich Holmes is offline
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Huh.

I just filed a MESS report and a report to Estes on yesterday's motor cato. The motor was a B4-2. It blew through the ejection end. Casing and nozzle remained intact. The date code on the casing was A090412.

I was looking at the one previous time I had a cato and reported it, two years ago. That was an Estes E9-6, and it blew out the nozzle. So not very similar.

Except the date code was 09 04 12.

Coincidence? Yeah, probably.
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Old 05-22-2016, 12:32 PM
A Fish Named Wallyum A Fish Named Wallyum is offline
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Nice to see someone doing some flying. Life has been too damp for me to do anything more than keep paddling. And the next two weeks don't look friendly if you believe they can see that far.
Great CATO pic, btw. Not sure if I've heard of a B4-2 doing that before.
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Old 05-22-2016, 02:13 PM
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astronwolf astronwolf is offline
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What does your club do for the "contest of the month" you mentioned?
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Old 05-22-2016, 02:39 PM
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Rich Holmes Rich Holmes is offline
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We have a couple of informal contests at each launch, along the lines of pink book but unofficial and relaxed. E.g. at this month's the tape measure was out of commission, so we just measured by pacing. In previous years we've just had one contest per month but this year there are two: one's different each month, one's the same all year, so in principle you can go home, work on improvements, and come back with better entries. In my case it's go home and rebuild the entry that exploded. That one's a B motor streamer spot landing. This month's other contest was a 2-stage spot landing, which I seem to have won without really trying (I didn't even remember there was such a contest until after I'd put my Loadstar II on the rod). (Of course it helps that only three or four of us typically have entries.)
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