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You can tell when things are going to go pear shaped when you stay out lat drinking the night before you're supposed to be organising something. So it was no surprise when I got to the launch site late and without half the stuff I needed. I'd forgotten the mallet, so I couldn't put out most of the signs so quite a few people drove around for a bit until they found us. I also forgot the cash box, and didn't have enough flight cards printed. You live and learn and I won't be doing that again in a hurry.
The next certification flight was a very eagerly awaited affair due to the fact that it was on a Hypertek motor. Only Scott Bartel of Blacksky in the US has flown these motors in the UK, so it was to be the first flight of one by a UK rocketeer. After Stephen Woolhead had improvised the ground support equipment so that it connected with UK threads to all the tanks they were ready to go. The Hypertek system is quite unique in that it is completely pyro free, it's ignited by a spark once the fuel grain is filled with gaseous oxygen. The force of the oxygen burning breaks a tie strap and allows the rocket to move upwards. This in turn switches on the nitrous flow and off the rocket goes, or at least it's supposed to. Stephen's modified Loc Warlock was held down by two straps by mistake and it took quite a while for them both to burn through. On reflection there wasn't enough nitrous in the tank, as no one really knew how long it should take to fill the tank and no one could see it venting. So the rocket didn't really get that far off the ground, but wow, the noise. I really want to fly one of these things as they make an absolute racket! Once the rocket achieved apogee, it tumbled back to earth without the R-DAS popping the chutes. The current theory is that the R-DAS suffered some damaged when it was in Stephen's AMRAAM that shredded last month on a J800.
The top half in the mean time slowly drifted down on its chute and John was able to recover it. Unfortunately he couldn't find the bottom half in the field, as the crops were just too high and he had to give up after a couple of hours of searching. Update 31st August: I've just been out to the site to pick up the bottom part of John rocket. The farmer nearly ran over it in his combine harvester but managed to stop just in time. Other cool flights were Helen Green and Richard Osborne's R.A.T.T. Works I80 flights, both of which went up well, shame Helen's parachutes didn't deploy properly. Roy Trzeciak-Hicks flew a Micro Hybrid that consists of a sparklet bulb and paper, parachute deployment was via a magnetic apogee sensor but it separated at apogee and the top half wasn't recovered. There were 34 flights in total, made by 15 flyers but I just don't have the energy to write about them all. You can see most of the flights in the photo album though.
Copyright © 1999-2007, Fatboab, all rights reserved.
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It was certainly an interesting launch with three different types of hybrid motor being flown and four attempts at Level 2 certification. First up for certification was Marcus Lauder with his GPI rocket on an Aerotech J350, unfortunately for Marcus the motor casing kicked out and he didn't get his cert this time. Gary Sinclair was next up with his highly modified BSD Thor on an Aerotech J460, for a cracking flight and a successful Level 2.
So we'd currently had two certification attempts that had failed and just the one success. So everyone was keeping their fingers crossed for John Davis and his brand new PML Eclipse. He'd already flown her earlier in the day on an Aerotech I300 just to check everything out and it was a really nice flight. He flew her on an Aerotech J460 and the boost was cracking and everything was fine until apogee. For some reason that we're not sure about the PML CPR3000 bay snapped in half and the bottom part of the rocket free fell into one of the corn fields.