ROCStock IV
November 1996
/ Lucerne Dry Lake
4 flights, 473 N-sec burned
For our first multi-day event, we loaded up the car and headed out Ortega highway (the back way up) on Friday night. Over the course of the weekend, my dad and I put up nine flights on everything from an Estes CATO on a C to the Arcas on a G64.
I had always loved the black smoke plume of the BlackJack propellant, since it was something completely different and unusual from that available in black powder motors. As such, our third reload in the 29/40-120 case was the BlackJack G motor. The Arcas made a graceful, slow flight on the G33, with on-time ejection at apogee handled by the 5 second motor delay.
The Arcas did well on the G33, so for its next flight, as the sun was setting, we loaded it up with a G64. The rocket had a beautiful flight on a big, bright flame, but landed really far out on the lakebed. No big deal - there's nothing like a nice walk in the cool desert at sunset!
Daybreak saw us loading another G64 for what was now my favorite rocket of our fleet. The flight on the fifth reload for our 29/40-120 case was again nominal, and recovered much closer than it did last time!
For the fourth flight of the Arcas, we had selected the biggest motor that would fit - an Aerotech G80T - to really push its limits. The flight was high, fast, and straight, with an apogee ejection, but landing brought a surprise: the single use motor had managed to eject by the Aerotech motor hook. Note for next time - add extra tape to secure the motor, especially when flying with our reload case!
