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We were all hoping for better weather at this launch than the last as the wind had put pay to a couple of flights at the end of the day. The weather forecast was good with the Sunday having the best of the weekend's weather and as it turned out it was a lovely day, apart from the wind. I think the new EARS site is going to be known for the wind more than anything else, although it wasn't as bad this time out and it didn't stop anything from flying.
Another feature of the first two EARS launches has been the time it takes for folks to arrive at the site and setup. It's advertised as a 10 o'clock start, but no one else turned up till 10.30 or so, at least when folks did turn up they started to prepare rockets straight away. This meant the Ban Jarvis was first with a prepped rocket, which came as a shock to practically everyone there. Ben is more known for wheeling out rockets last thing at night, so it was a refreshing change to see him have the first launch. Ben launched Gone Fision, which used to be the sustainer of the MARS Phobos 1 altitude attempt rocket, on an Aerotech I300. Ben has done a lovely paint job on this rocket that took him ages, luckily he got it back. Next up was Stephen Woolhead, another member of MARS, and he flew his PML AMRAMM 4 on an Aerotech I284 for a perfect flight. Young Thomas Hicks then started the model flying with a cool two-stage flight of his Born Again Rocket on an Estes D12-0 to Estes C6-7. Next up was Paul Ylioja who lives locally but has been flying with HART in the past. He flew his rocket The Shark on a five D12 cluster, unfortunately the shock cord broke but all the bits were recovered. It really needs to fly on D12-7's but since Estes are no longer making them the only other solution is to make the rocket heavier. Paul also flew his Trasher rocket twice on D12-5's.
We had a few newcomers to this event, with Paul mentioned above and the Ashby's who flew, and Gary Sinclair who brought along a couple of his kids just to watch. Nicholas Ashby managed to launch a couple of their model rockets with the highlight being their Mongoose two stager on C6-0 to an A8-3. Hopefully we'll see them all back in March with the Sinclair's joining in the flying. The MARS crew were out in force and Iain Colledge flew his PML AMRAAM 4 on an I435 for his Level 1 certification. Iain claims the finish on his rocket was a "rush job", if that's a rush job I may as well give up painting any of my rockets, he's definitely got this painting rockets business down to a fine art. Chris Eilbeck launched his ADR-2 on a H123, this 38mm to 29mm single stage rocket was very impressive to watch from back at the cars. Being quite a small rocket Chris had one of his home brewed radio trackers in it and recovered it after a small search. Richard Osbourne flew his Get Real four inch rocket on a J275 for a lovely flight, one of the best of the day. Unfortunately his recovery record is still 100% intact as the shock cord decided to leave the booster section and it broke a fin on landing. Ben Jarvis and Stephen Woolhead had a drag race between Ben's Honest Bob and Stephen's new PML Eclipse. Ben was the clear winner on an I161 and the rocket was out of sight before Stephen's had even ignited its J415. Unfortunately the rocket was out of sight when an ejection charge was heard to go off, but after search for it the Eclipse wasn't recovered.
Since the rocket was long and no one had a ladder or any other way of arming the AltAcc we had to arm it in a diagonal position and then set the rocket into it's launch position. This was probably not a good idea. Once everyone was back at the cars a countdown was given and Chris pushed the button. Now I must admit to being rather sceptical about the rockets chances of working and was expecting one of the interstage couplers to snap and the rocket to land shark. The K1100 came up to pressure really quickly and the whole rocket streaked off the pad in one piece. It coasted for quite a while before the J350 came up to pressure and sent the upper two stages upwards. The 2nd stage timer failed to ignite the H180, which in retrospect was quite a good thing as the AltAcc failed to deploy either the drogue or the main chute. Since the sustainer motor didn't go off the top two stages were still joined when they made a very fast visit to Spackington. Chris and Roy went off to find the carnage but came back over an hour later saying that they couldn't find any of it. Roy and myself went out again the next day and in 5 hours of searching still couldn't find any traces of rocket debris. The current theory is that it landed in a man made lagoon and is buried at the bottom of it. We have since learned that the lagoon is a maximum of four foot deep so we are going to mount a salvage operation to see if we can at least recover the motor casings.
So all in all it was a great launch, we had more people turn up and we had more rockets flown than the last launch. Three Level 1 certification flights and a couple of Level 2 attempts made for some nice motors being flown. Hopefully next year when we start to really push the launches they will go from strength to strength.
Addendum
Well, it seems that I got a bit of information wrong... I got this from Chris Eilbeck: "Just one small correction: I didn't have the pods to fly the tapered rocket, Mudpies, so I flew ADR-2 (Avionics Development Rocket 2) with no payload bay and in single stage recovery config. It's straight 54mm PML phenolic, set up to take a J570, bwahahaha! The tracking worked really well, I had a track at about 500m out from ground level and the rocket landed about 700m from the launch point." Copyright © 1999-2007, Fatboab, all rights reserved.
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When I woke up at around 7.30am there were no clouds in the sky and no wind, since I live only 15 minutes from the launch site I was very happy. On arriving at the launch site I found out that living 15 minutes away with no wind doesn't mean that there's no wind at the launch site… I was greeted by Jeremy and Robin Tomes and lightish breeze, it picked up through out the day but was erratic and came and went.
We then had out first Level 1 certification fight by Jeremy Tomes and his PML Sudden Rush on an I300, everything went smoothly and Jeremy is now Level 1. The Tomes' are getting very good at this two stage deployment malarkey although they need to fly some motors other than the mighty I300.
Just before the drag race Chris Key flew his three stage Quantum Leap, yes I did say three stage. Chris has been planning this flight for a while but hadn't found a suitable field to launch from. On the day he decided to but a K1100 in the 1st stage a J350 in the 2nd stage and a H180 in the sustainer. He spent all day putting it together on his own and finally got it ready for flight, I helped in carry it down to the pad and set it up, this is where we hit the first problem...
After the drag race there was another two rockets flown, Zigi flew his Raptor for what turned out to be it's final flight after the parachute stripped and it spacked. It was a shame as it was a really nice rocket and the flight on a J180 was superb, hopefully Zigi will be back with a similar rocket soon. Cath Bashford launched her rocket Kry on a H123 for her Level 1 certification, she had tried at the last launch but was foiled by the high winds. She was nearly foiled again, but for the application of a couple of Blacksky rail guides.