Syracuse Rocket Club launch: Once more without MLAS

I brought seven rockets to fly today at the club launch, plus two backups in case my contest rockets failed me. But I flew only five of them. Partly this was because I arrived later than I would have liked, and because I had only two of those rockets prepped with motors. Both of those were because I didn’t have enough time to get ready in advance. Or didn’t use the time or something.

Anyway, what didn’t fly was the Ventris, which I just wanted to fly because it’s been over a year, and the MLAS which I finished last fall and still haven’t flown. Maybe next month.

The launch theme was clusters, and I started off with the Callisto on 3 x 1/2A3-4T with Q2G2 igniters. I’d wanted to go 3 x A but discovered I didn’t seem to have three matching 13 mm A motors. Never mind, it flew fine on 1/2A. The wind had shifted since they set up the field, so the Callisto blew over the flight line and came down on someone’s popup. Nothing damaged though.

I prepped the Bad Cholesterol but didn’t get to the table in time to snag a long 3/16″ rod, so I put my Blender up next on an A10-PT. Blenders are designed to spit their motors but that’s illegal on our field, so I used a plugged motor. The Blender went up, it went down, it spun around, it was great.

Then I did fly the Bad Cholestoerol on a C11-3. This was a hitherto unflown configuration, with the smaller egg capsule’s center section omitted to fly a single egg for the C egglofter duration contest. Roger had already gotten a great 1:04 time on a lightweight rocket with a wide Mylar chute that caught a thermal. Whereas I left my big Mylar chute at home out of forgetfulness, so stuffed in two TopFlight chutes, 18″ and 15″, for an I’m-just-looking-for-participation-points entry. Got a big big 19 seconds. Flight was good though.

For the B Streamer Spot Landing contest I had a more serious entry, the B3S2a. Of course if I were really serious I would have measured the distance to the target and the wind speed, run an on-field simulation to optimize the nose weight and launch rod angle, and worked from that. But I didn’t bring a computer, a scale, or a protractor with me. Sad. I just threw 50 BBs into the nose weight container, angled the lauch rod toward the target, and hoped. The club was once again ill prepared for distance measurements so we went by paces, and the B3S2a came down 4.5 paces off the target. The second and third place holders (at one point, and I think it stayed this way) were 14 and 15 paces off. I have a feeling I will never do better the rest of this year.

My last flyer was the Ranger, on 3 x B6-4 with Estes (black tip) igniters. I used a Dennis-influenced setup with three igniter leads soldered to a single wire and the other three soldered to a wire ring. It worked, they all lit and it flew well. For the first time I put one of my newly acquired altimeters aboard and it beeped out 364 feet.