Balls 2008

I ran out of time to build anything new for this years Balls event. I did have a new BeeLine GPS and tracker that I wanted to try out. My son AJ was able to go with me this year. It had been a couple of years since AJ has been able to go to a launch with me..so it was nice to have him along. Friday morning a group of guys showed up at camp asking if I had found my 5" rocket from last years Balls. I informed them that it was still "misplaced". One of the guys..Chuck.. asked if we wanted to go look for it in his airplane! I let AJ be the offical 'young eyes' for the flight. Once they left the ground I began to think. I just sent my son..yes he's 22 years old now..off in a plane with some guys I had just met. I worried..for about an hour, about what I was going to tell his mother, when the plane touched back down. AJ got some cool areail photos but no rocket..maybe next year. The below photo is of Trego Hot springs near the RR crossing

We had brought four rockets to fly. First up was my Fear Factor rocket with a N1600 Swamp Gas motor. It was right at 55 pounds sitting on the pad. This was the fourth flight for this rocket. The only new thing with the motor was..that I could not get liners and casting tubes that I had been using. I tried out some spent AT 98mm liners and (new) casting tubes. My 98mm hardware is 3.625" ID. I did have to make the shoulder on the nozzle and forward closure a bit smaller. Other then that it seemed to work fine. So with Fear Factor on the pad...BeeLine GPS on Kenwood in hand I was ready. At zero there was a small puff of smoke a bit of burning Wimpy Red falling off the igniter and the N1600 came to life...

The motor burned for the 7 plus seconds and the coasted to apogee. I kept looking at the Kenwood seeing how the display kept changing. Apogee was at 24,187' We could see the 6' white drogue but kept our eyes on the Kenwood for it's GPS. Once the GPS location stopped moving I entered the #'s into my Garrmin...I don't have the Kenwood to Garmin cord yet. AJ and I then drove out to the rocket. This was pretty cool but seemed to take away some of the excitement of hunting for the rocket.Once to the rocket it was all splayed out on the playa. All my shock cord break points were all still intact. I'm guessing I got my BP charges all dialed in on this rocket now.

Next up was my old L3 rocket Speedy Gonzales...this was Speedies 20th flight. It had a 6 grain 75mm motor loaded with a new formula I have been working on called NotSoWimpy. For tracking we were trying out a BeeLine Tx. I had a yagi hooked to the Kenwood and I was getting a signal.


Apogee was at just over 16K We could see the rocket under drogue, but I wanted to use the BeeLine Tx. The problem was...that no matter where I pointed the yagi, I would get a signal! Un-like the Walston...where you can turn down the gain..The Kenwood/BeeLine does not have this option. I'm going to need to get an attenuator..which acts like 'de-tuning' the radio..or something like that. we drove out to where the rocket was landing, and took some photos of it layed out on the playa. For those of you that don't know..I have a 1 1/2 year old yellow lab..named Rocket..it took me awhile to come up with that name too!....anyway seems that rocket is pretty smart. This was only his third time out to Black Rock and had learned that there were very few tries to relieve himself on. So he found the closest thing.



Below is a video of the above two flights..and no AJ was not trying to catch it!



The next flight up was AJ's Estes Fat Boy flying on a I292 Wimpy Red with a 10 second delay. This was the rockets 7th I flight and it's first EX flight. I think the rockets about 7 years old now. As you can guess it shot off the pad and AJ drove out and found it in about 15 minutes. Finding it has been the problem in the past.
Next up was my 54mm carbon fiber rocket..Into Thin Air..flying on Swamp Gas in a spent AT K250 case. Below is the Burnsim for the motor.

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Everything went well up unitl apogee. Where we did not get a Walston signal. about a minute later we hear that god awful sound of a main deploying as the rockets coming in balistic. We went out and looked for about a half hour and began to get hungry. We returned to camp and AJ was going to head back out and I was going to start cooking diner. I had a similar flight a couple of launches back and remembered that..that flight was out about a mile and a half. So, I told AJ to go out about a mile and start looking and to come back around 6pm for dinner. he came back a bit early and had the rocket. The only thing that was wrong with the rocket was..besides a shreded mainw as the the body tube was crumpled up about an inch at one of the joints. We opened it up and the Walston was still working and the ARTS was blinking out it data..much much better then what could have been!


So, that was our four fligts at Balls this year. And all four of them in one day! It pays off coming to a launch prepared. We spent Sunday talking with friends and kicking back..as it should be!