October 31, 2005
I'll be there, look for the red Mazda pickup. If you need more info, feel free to ask in the comments or via email. If you do decide to come out, please check that link or check back here, and I'll post whatever go/no go information I have if the weather's dicey.
This will be the first BattlePark for me sans kids, which is going to be kind of strange (I've got a seat open if someone would like to ride with). We've camped out there before, and other times we've just made day trips of it. Either way, it's big fun.
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October 07, 2005
This launch was one of our monthly club launches, sponsored by NOVAAR. Held at Great Meadow Equestrian Center on 9/11/2005, the weather was beautiful and the wind ranged from near calm to quite brisk. The biggest problem was that it was blowing diagonally across the field, directly towards the biggest patch of woods bordering the field.
I pulled a shift as Launch Controller, and also made several flights of my own.
1. Angel - D12-5 - This ring-fin hadn't flown for a couple of years, but she made an excellent comeback flight.
2. Snitch - D12-0 / C6-0 - I chad-staged this plastic flying saucer from Estes. Great flight, and it always gets a lot of attention with the big motor hanging out from underneath.
3. Pacifyer - D12-5 - Arrow-straight boost and good recovery for my flying blood-dripping battleaxe.
4. YJ-218 - C6-7x2 - Perfect ignition of both engines. Great flight.
5. Phoenix - H180 White Lightning, medium delay - Loud and smokey, and after the motor burnout you could hear her fins whistling as she coasted to apogee. She suffered the only damage of the day, when she landed on one lower fin and the body tube partially delaminated. Easy fix, and the fin is still rock solid.
6. Barenaked Lady - F24-7 - This flight was just plain stupid. I put a big honkin' motor in a large but very lightweight rocket. She screamed off the pad, arced ever so slightly into the wind, and landed less than 50 yards away. Only on low-wind days. Sweet!
7. Odin's Spear - B6-6 - Another excellent flight from Vertical Force's first kit offering. Rich was kind enough to give me one of the new kits in the package for helping to test the prototype. It's numbered too. Cool!
So that was it for my flights. Another excellent rocket flying day that are far too far apart.
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October 06, 2005
A private group of rocketeers has banded together to create the Rocket Racing League with aims at blurring the line between competitive racing and human spaceflight. Their vision: A fleet of at least 10 stock rocket planes flown by crack pilots through a three-dimensional track 5,000 feet above the Earth.
"Imagine not one, but 10 of these fire-breathing dragons flying around a race course." -- Peter Diamandis
One of these visionaries is Peter Diamandis, who also founded the $10 million Ansari X Prize suborbital competition for private piloted spacecraft.
The liquid oxygen/kerosene fuel mix is expected to have a burn time of about four minutes, which would force pilots to repeatedly shut down their engines and glide, then restart as needed to surpass opponents, explained Searfoss, who will demonstrate the method during the upcoming prototype demonstration.Because of their fuel type, X-Racers should also generate a 20-foot flame easily visible from the ground, which will be vital for spectators, Diamandis said.
These people aren't crazy, they're looking to foster greater interest among the population for civilian spaceflight.
Better duck, NASCAR.
Thanks to Chris Hall at Spacecraft for the pointer. He's got some interesting background tie-in information too.
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September 19, 2005
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September 11, 2005
I also didn't do a specific countdown like I have the last two years. Click this link to see my previous Countdown to 9/11 images.
Have a great day.
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August 28, 2005
I even have a checklist to make sure I don't forget anything when I'm packing my truck for the launch.
I also have a binder full of useful rocketry stuff that goes with me every time. Inside are my checklists, a roster of my larger rockets showing weight, chute sizes, expected altitudes on various motors and other important things I need to know when flying high power. There are wiring diagrams for my altimeter bays, enlarged photocopies of the various motor assembly instructions (the originals are small and hard to read), specs for my launch control box and hybrid system, and anything else I might find handy, all collected up into one book.
The picture shows the new cover for my binder (click for bigger). We took the picture a couple of years ago at Battle Park in Culpeper, Virginia.
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August 22, 2005
That means two things:
1. He can fly high power rockets now (H and I motors).
2. His wallet is gonna be empty.
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11:34 AM | category: Rocketry
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August 18, 2005
I just realized I don't have pictures posted of another odd-roc we did, named Invader Zim's Song of Doom. She used a funnel for drag stability instead of fins, and the nosecone was a green plastic easter egg with silver alien eyes made from duct tape. This one had problems from the outset. Not with the going up part, but with the coming down part. As in parachutes not wanting to work correctly. She finally destroyed herself by becoming a lawn dart, and we have the video tape to cringe over anytime we want to watch it. Embarrassing.
I finally did find a picture of the Invader Zim's Song of Doom rocket. This is pre-decal, which were basically just "doom, doom, doom, doom..." winding up, down and all over the silly thing.
This next one is one of my early scratchbuilt mid-to-high power rockets, the Bootlegger. She's still in fairly good shape, but semi-retired after making many great flights. I made the logo in PowerPoint and printed it onto decal paper using a laser printer.
This rocket is called Watch the Birdie, and she was an experiment in finishing techniques. I used black primer followed up by an ultra-flat black cover coat, and around the rocket nozzle area I used heat-resistant barbeque paint. The flash adds a shine that really isn't there in real life, this thing is suck-all-available-light-into-it black. And for those who think all I do is big rockets, look closely at the picture and you'll notice that I built two. The little one is 3 inches tall and fully flyable.
Last one. The picture is small, but it's the only picture I have of this rocket, taken just before liftoff. Several years ago, Estes released a neat kit called the Prowler. It was a big rocket, being more than four feet long, and very customizable. What happened when I was building mine was that the glue siezed up before I got the tubes joined together and wound up with about a one half inch gap. It was strong enough to not matter, so I filled the gap with rocket bondo and got ready to paint it. Since this rocket was one half inch longer than the regular version, it must obviously have been crafted by the peace loving people of the workers paradise of the USSR as a defense against the inferior (by one half inch!) rocket built by the war mongering capitalist running dog lackeys. So after a red, silver and black paintjob (and the one yellow fin), in bold cyrillic letters she was christened the Prowlski.
I flew her on big motors for her size and weight. I lost her three different times, but since I had my name and number on the rocket, the first two times I got phone calls from the person who found it. The third time was in the early fall in a farm field (it wasn't cotton, corn or tobacco so I'm guessing soybeans), and even though I saw about where it landed I spent about an hour looking without finding it. I picked up the remains in the spring, because the farmer collected lost rockets as he did his harvesting, but this one went through the machine and was an almost total loss. I got the motor casing back undamaged (the expensive part - yay!).
I still have a couple of Prowler's in the box, I probably should build another one.
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August 17, 2005
I know Doug Pratt is planning on flying a biggun' on a HyperTech (or is that a SkyRipper?) J-330 hybrid motor (with nitrous injection). If I get the altimeter bay rebuilt in time I'll be putting up "Ain't Misbehavin'" on a RATTworks I-80 hybrid (now where did I put that picture?). I'm also going to launch my scale Phoenix (another picture here) on an Aerotech H-128 White Lightning. Plus my usual box o' little fun stuff.
You're invited.
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July 28, 2005
I'd never seen the show before, but what it seems to be is a set team of generalists (engineers, fabricators, etc), known as the MasterBlasters, go up against a team of "experts" to accomplish a given task for the episode. For last nights' experts, the rocketry guys were led by Erik Gates, who is a legend in high-power rocketry. The rest of his team included his brother Dirk, plus some of their friends who've helped on other big Gates Brother's projects (great photos of their work are available here). You may have seen the Gates Brothers on the show MythBusters, when they assisted in the episode where they strapped rockets to the top of a car.
Back to MasterBlasters. Inspired by the movie Wizard of Oz, each team was given a kid's playhouse made of wood. These weren't flimsy little structures, they were basically mini-houses with an attached porch and full roof, maybe six or eight feet to a side and about that tall as well. The challenge was to launch the house with four rocket motors to the greatest possible altitude, the house had to spin at least three times on the way up (tornado!), at the top the wicked witch on her broom had to be released to fall seperately, and the house - with Dorothy (and her little doggie too!) on the front porch - had to be returned to ground safely.
Quite a task.
I won't give spoilers, because it's quite fun to watch the final results. I found it interesting that, as is usually the case in these kinds of shows, the two teams came up with radically different solutions to the problem. The rocketeers basically used the house itself as the nosecone of their rocket, whereas the Masterblasters built a mast containing their rocket motors to drag the structure behind. It worked very much like the escape tower functioned on the US manned capsules (and I talked about the escape towers here and here with my posts about the Little Joe series of rockets).
Fun episode. If you get a chance, see it. I'll be checking back to see what other kind of fun the MasterBlasters get into in future shows.
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July 23, 2005
(caption from 3rd photo down on the page)Prowler just lifting off from STO launch using RATO pack with AeroTech™ M2500 motor and Aero Pack RA98 retainer.
The M2500 of which they speak is a popular Level 3 certification motor. That's right, we hobbty rocketeers get to play with military-grade propellants, or maybe it's the military that gets to play with consumer-grade rocketry motors.
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09:17 AM | category: SciTech
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July 20, 2005
This yearÂ’s contest challenges secondary school students to design, build and fly a model rocket that carries one raw egg to an altitude as close to 800 feet as possible and stays airborne for as close to 45 seconds as possible and returns the egg to the ground safely.
Hmmmm, altitude and duration. Very interesting...
Because of the need for altimeter's in the rocket (altitude measurement), they're limiting the number of entries to the first 750 teams. The National Finals are scheduled for May 20, 2006, at Great Meadow, The Plains, Virginia. Sponsors include 39 major aerospace companies. More information is available at www.rocketcontest.org.
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June 26, 2005
This is a big rocket that they're sending up. For example, here's some of the data from their preliminary simulations as they calculate the best timing to deploy the chutes on the dropaway boosters.
Each booster is 9" dia, 8' tall weighing about 20 lbs at burnout. Boosters are connected fore and aft and will be released by blowing charges at both connection points. Vehicle will be traveling 404 mph at 2600' at time of release (6 seconds into the flight) CG on the booster will be slightly forward of center (maybe 12")I suspect the large surface area and low weight will cause the booster to slow rapidly, compared to the main rocket weighing about 90 lbs, carrying much more inertia.
This weekend was the scheduled maiden flight from the field down at Whitakers, North Carolina. I don't have a link to the liftoff pictures yet, but here's one of the Titan IV on the pad as they prep before flight.
Word is, the launch was spectacular.
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June 06, 2005
I've also spent time talking to students who're building and launching CanSat payloads (real electronic payloads fit into a space the size of a coke can). Almost every month at our scheduled club rocket launches, we get several teams testing new designs for both TARC and CanSats.
Some of those kids have gone on to participate in NASA's Student Launch Initiative (SLI) program.
Some of the kids involved have gone on to college and are now working towards a career in aerospace. When they do, they get to do things like the Virginia Tech Sounding Rocket Project.
The mission is being sponsored by NASA's Sounding Rocket Operations Contract (NSROC) in Wallops Island, Virginia. NSROC has provided Virginia Tech with manufacturing of most payload components, a rocket motor, as well as official engineering analysis of the design. As part of the process, the students have attended 4 professional meetings at the NASA Wallops facility and have gotten the opportunity to collaborate with NSROC engineers on how to improve the design of the payload. The launch will take place on Wallops Island in mid-May of 2005.
Jealous? You bet I am.
The payload weighs approximately 190 pounds and is about 10.3 feet in length. The Orion motor will carry this payload to an altitude of nearly 60 miles above the surface of the Earth in approximately 150 seconds. After apogee, the payload will reenter, a parachute will deploy, and the payload will splash down in the ocean. A recovery team will then retrieve the payload from the water, and then will be brought back to NSROC's facility where it will be taken apart. The MAGIC instrument will be returned to NRL for analysis and the students will analyze the rocket flight data obtained through telemetry transmissions.
They recently made their successful launch. Check out preflight coolness, and then some launch and recovery pictures. Thanks to Professor Chris Hall for sharing this. Now, how can I get one of those decals for my rocket?
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June 05, 2005
I travelled very light, only bringing two rockets and a handful of engines. Pity too, because the day was hot and humid and the air was almost calm, meaning straight up and straight down. A perfect day for altitude.
Click here for a picture of the two rockets.
The first rocket (the yellow one) is a prototype of a kit being produced by my buddy Rich of Vertical Force Rocketry. He gave me a pre-production kit to build so I could give him feedback on the instructions and materials, and then make some test flights. It's a ring-fin model called the Odin's Spear and folks, this bird rocks! If you're looking for something new to build after a couple of Estes kits, I very much recommend this rocket.
The second rocket (white with black nose) was an experiment. Someone at NARAM last summer built a single finned rocket that relies on spinning to remain stable (fin detail here). I took pictures of it and built my version to play with. The original basically unravelled the cardboard tube on the third flight (serious torque!), so mine has two tubes, one inside the other for extra strength. Thinking back on it, his might have kicked the entire motor mount out the back to deploy the chute, making the nosecone permanently mounted up front. That's important to remember as you read further on. It's a fun rocket, spinning like a ballerina on handfuls of speed washed down by double-espressos.
It was sorta successful. So all told I made five flights:
1. Odin's Spear - A8-5 - When the motor burned out you could hear a whistle! Stays low enough for schoolyard launching, chute right at apogee.
2. Odin's Spear - B6-6 - Another arrow-straight boost, very quick and gets great altitude for a B motor. The whistling happened as she slowed down before deploying the chute, again right at apogee.
3. Nameless spinning prototype - D12-5 - About 20 feet up she was spinning and the nosecone came off. Tipped unstable and landed in the grass where the ejection charge went off. No damage.
4. Nameless spinning prototype - D12-3 - I added some masking tape to the nosecone shoulder to make it harder to some loose, but it did anyway some 50 feet up. Chute deployed normally this time and she also spun on the way down. Minor fin damage, can be repaired (although I don't know if I'll bother).
5. Odin's Spear - C6-7 - Zoooooom! Almost lost sight of it way up there, but saw the chute deploy, once again right at the top. Another brief whistle as she slowed down. My longest walk of the day for recovery, maybe 50 yards.
It was almost noon and I had to get going, so I made a quick stop at the Performance Hobbies trailer (gotta love a hobby shop that comes to the flying field!) and picked up a pair of AeroTech H128 White Lightning motors and an AeroTech H165 Redline motor. I'll fly them in my big rockets another day. Said goodbye to my friends and left. I briefly talked to frequent Rocket Jones commenter Russ, who was arriving just as I was heading out.
Short and sweet, that's how to describe my day flying rockets. Big fun.
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May 29, 2005
If you've got the connection speed, I especially recommend the video of the on-board camera carried aloft by the Nike-Smoke. Awesome!
Also, someone passed along this link to an NPR spot that focused on one of the all-girl teams that competed. You can click on the 'listen' button for the related audio.
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May 28, 2005
Quick recap: 712 student teams comprised of 10,000 young ladies and gentlemen from across the US (and one DoD school in Germany) entered the contest, vying for $60,000 in scholarship money (plus extra goodies, more on those later). Each team had a teacher sponsor, and many had mentor volunteers from the National Association of Rocketry. Bottom line though, the kids themselves had to design, build and fly the rocket without adult assistance.
The challenge was to build a rocket that would be aloft for exactly 60 seconds, carry one or two fresh eggs, and return the eggs unbroken. The rocket could be a single stage model, but would incurr a 3 second penalty. Carrying only one egg incurred an additional 3 second penalty. So if a team built a single-stage rocket that carried one egg and stayed aloft for 61 seconds, then their score would be 1 (the difference from the target time of 60 seconds) + 3 (single stage) + 3 (single egg) = a score of 7. Note that whether their time was long or short didn't matter (a time of 59 seconds in that example would result in the same score of 7), and it's scored the same way. A lower score is better.
Clear as mud? It's harder to explain that it is to understand.
So all 712 teams were required to make a qualification flight. The flights were witnessed and the results were sent in for tabulation. The 100 best scores were selected for the finals. Five finalists couldn't make it for various reasons and alternates were selected in order from the top scores. To give you an idea of the difficulty of the challenge, less than 300 teams were able to enter qualification flights.
At the finals, each team made a single flight for score. Talk about pressure!
We drove to the Friday night briefing at the newest high school in the county. First we had ours (the volunteer range crew), where we learned the details needed for the following day. While that was going on, the cafeteria was quickly filling with excited students and teachers. Teams had to register and then pick up their equipment. Many teams has shipped their rockets ahead to Aurora Flight Sciences (based in Manassas, Virginia and owned by one of our club members). Because of postal and airline regulations, most teams had pre-ordered rocket motors to be delivered at the contest.
After the range crew brief, the students filed in. Mixed in among the students were the volunteer from AIA (blue polos) and the NAR (white polos and khaki pants). Mookie and I talked to a couple of teams that were sitting near us before things got started.
In order to run an event this big and keep it strictly fair for everyone, things have to run on schedule. The two guys who put it together again this year are retired military, and have a unique way of driving that point home.
When everyone was seated, the contest director stood in front of the group and pointed to a digital clock on the podium. You know, the kind that synchronizes itself via a radio signal to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) (similar to this). He called a time check and hack exactly on the hour. There were some snickers amongst the kids, but it was emphasized that each team had a set prep 'window' and set launch 'window'. Failure to make your flight during your window was an automatic disqualification. No exceptions. That put notice to everyone that the schedule wasn't merely a suggestion of when things should happen, it listed when things *would* happen. Gee, just like the real world, eh?
After some remarks by the head of the NAR and AIA, the safety and information briefing was done, followed by a neat little presentation by Dr. Jay Apt, who flew on the shuttle four times. He started off by asking everyone to imagine the most fun they'd ever had, and then imagining that times 100. Then he said, "Space flight is even better than that". He went on to give a short autobiography, touching on his postings at various observatories (he's an astronomer by training), and showing the things he did to become an astronaut (it wasn't easy and he did some career moves specifically to get into space). A very impressive show. Dr. Apt is a trustee for the NAR and a helluva nice guy.
After the briefing, Rachael and I headed home for some sleep. We had to be back at the field at 6am the following morning.
The field had been set up the day before by about 25 volunteers who worked through about 2" of rain in four hours, all of it blowing straight sideways. Mookie and I have volunteered to help set up in previous years, but couldn't do it this year because of work and school commitments. I'm a bad person for not feeling guilty about that, because those guys worked their tails off in miserable weather.
The field was wet and squishy but there were no massive mud pits, thanks to the fact that it's like a huge front lawn and there's great drainage of the entire area.
Mookie was tasked to be a runner for the day, shuttling flight cards and paperwork amongst the various checkpoints (egg issue, safety check, range control, etc). They had enough runners to adaquately cover the main places, so she spent much of the day with me, running notices up to the PA and radio announcers and escorting teams and teachers to their media interviews.
I was one of two designated bad guys (referred to as "trolls" during the pre-brief). Along with a rocketeer from Florida named Bruno, we handled access to the flying field through the only open gate. Past us, only student teams were allowed. No parents, no teachers, no advisors. We said "no" a lot to folks all day long and even caught a few who tried to sneak casually stroll by, thinking that the rules couldn't possibly apply to them. On the upside, every single team and rocket went past us, and we got to see many of them up close and talk to the kids. I can honestly say that no team went onto that field without hearing Bruno, Mookie (when she was around) or I wishing them good luck. We also answered lots of spectator questions and made sure the media folks knew where things were.
Early in the morning, after a group of students sang the National Anthem (with a Jr ROTC color guard display) there was a helicopter flyover by the Marine Helicopter Squadron-1 (HMX-1), the first Marine aviation unit ever established and the unit responsible for all Presidential helicopter flights. Last year it was a pair of F18 fighters, but apparently the jets on afterburner scared the crap out of some local folks who thought some sort of emergency was going on. The choppers were cool though, check here and here for pics of the aircraft involved.
There was a "pool feed" for local television stations to tap into during the event, and I've heard from several people that they saw reports on various news programs. The winning team appeared on the Today show.
Also, there were plenty of VIP's around. Rachael and I spent a few minutes talking to Vern Estes and his wife Gleda. They attend a lot of rocketry events all over the country, and Vern mentioned that he'd never imagined this many young people all flying rockets in one place at one time. Mookie got her picture taken with the Estes, and her field pass autographed by Vern himself.
After the contest flying was over, several demo flights were made. There was a celebrity impersonator present who did a pretty good Albert Einstein (100 years ago he introduced the theory of relativity - Albert, not the impersonator), and then the Goddard rocket flight. Then nine high power rockets took to the sky, dwarfing the rockets that the students flew and showing them what the next step was if they wanted to pursue the hobby. Big wow factor, including a very nice flight made by a rocket sporting an Animal Motor Works "Green Gorilla" motor which fires with, you guessed it, a brilliant emerald green flame.
Then it was time for the awards. Speeches, VIP's, giant "prize" checks, photos of all the teams, special awards given by the various aerospace companies for things like best craftsmanship, lightest successful rocket, teamwork, etc. I can't quote her exactly, but The Director of Education for NASA said something I thought really brought things into perspective:
You designed and successfully flew a payload carrying vehicle. It launched safely, completed the mission it was designed for, and brought the payload it was carrying back unharmed. (pointing to the three NASA astronauts on the platform) I think they'll agree that you've conquered the important parts of this challenge, especially the 'bringing back the payload unharmed' part.
This contest is truly a space program in miniature, and for the third year in a row the kids kicked its butt.
If you go to the TARC site (click through the opening pages), you'll find photographs of many of the teams and what awards they won. The final results are up too, and I'm amazed at the precision these kids achieved. Remember that the challenge was a targeted time aloft of 60 seconds, and 43 teams out of 100 were within 10 seconds of that. Six teams were within 2 seconds of the target! Two teams dropped out of the top 10 because they decided to design and fly a less complex single-stage rocket and accept the time penalty involved.
The shortest successful flight was just under 18 seconds. The rocket arced near horizontal right off the launch rod. Staging was perfect, except for the horizontal part, and just as everyone was expecting it to slam into the ground (about 20 feet above and 200 yards downrange) the chute ejected. The recovery was abrupt and violent, but the chute opened, the eggs were intact (!!!) and everything else held together.
After the awards ceremony I got to play troll again and manage access to a huge catered BBQ. Talking to the caterer, they fed 400 people in the first 20 minutes, and almost a thousand in all in less than an hour. Mookie and I got our food (I was the last in line) and sat with an adult from one of the teams. Don't know if he was a parent or teacher, we originally thought he was just quiet, but it gradually came out that he was royally pissed at another adult who talked the kids into changing their parachute size at the last minute, and it cost the kids a place in the top 10. It was very uncomfortable because the students and adults were sitting at three or four different tables and nobody would talk to each other. I'm glad I didn't have to share a ride home with them!
As we headed to the truck after a long and happy day, Rachael and I noticed that Vern and Gleda Estes were walking in front of us, holding hands.
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09:37 AM | category: Rocketry
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May 22, 2005
The top three student teams were all within 1 second of the target time.
Ken Mattingly of Apollo 13 fame (still sans measles) was there.
The Director of Education for NASA attended again, and in her remarks said that NASA was on the edge of a massive wave of engineer retirements, and that they desperately needed an influx of young talent. She said that they weren't able to get enough new people to backfill the positions left vacant.
No mention of commercial space. Not surprising since NASA and the Aerospace Industry Association picked up the tab for TARC, and none of the new players are members in the AIA (yet). Still, this is an opportunity to recruit and promote that private space companies should grab a piece of if they can.
One of the demo flights was a full-scale reconstruction of Robert Goddard's original rocket. Unlike the original flight, this one was designed to fly in a safe and stable manner, and did. It looked scale, it didn't fly scale.
Several teams managed to hang their rockets in evil rocket-eating trees, but all managed to get them back and return the egg payload for scoring. One team found their rocket after searching for five hours. Only one team never found their rocket.
God likes rockets.
Lots of goodies and stuff to check out along "vendor row". Mostly colleges passing out information on their engineering and sciences curriculums. The CIA was there, so was the Civil Air Patrol, and they had a nifty Wright Brothers flight simulator where you could sit in a reconstruction of their original flyer's cockpit (such as it was) and try to fly the darned thing. The line was too long for Mookie and I to get to try that.
I remembered sunscreen. Mostly.
My cheeks hurt from smiling all day long.
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06:37 AM | category: Rocketry
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May 21, 2005
Last night Mookie and I sat in an auditorium with over 500 motivated and enthusiastic young men and women, their parents and teachers, listening to the pre-brief.
Gotta run. More info over on the right sidebar. Do a search for "Team America", or scroll down under the sections for "Rocketry" and "I'm Involved".
Fun, fun, fun, and a complete report later.
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04:44 AM | category: Rocketry
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