ROCStock VII
June 1998
/ Lucerne Dry Lake
4 flights, 1359 N-sec burned
The weather all winter had been miserable; 1997 was an El Nino (yes I know I'm missing the tilde, the character set doesn't support it) year, and the lakebed was sopping wet. But El Nino winters traditionally lead to La Nina seasons for the next year, and we were finally rewarded with BEAUTIFUL clear, calm, and cool conditions at the lakebed. We brought the brand new, rebuilt Bruiser out to this launch for its first adventure into the air, and also put up our new Expediter twice.
Flight 1: Expediter, AT H242
The first flight of this rocket was the first HPR flight my dad and I had made since the Bruiser lake staked. To say I was nervous was an understatement. Thankfully, the rocket rose straight up from the pad and made a perfect flight into the Lucerne air. Recovery was nominal, and after a short walk, my confidence in high power was once again restored
Altitude: 2,324 ft
Flight 2: Bruiser, AT I284
After flying the Expediter to 2300 feet to knock the edge off the nerves, it was time for the main event: fly the rebuilt Bruiser for the first time since its awful lawn dart the previous September. This time, we made extra certain to tape the forward closure black powder well to insure the deployment charge would stay in place. And it worked like a charm - the freshly painted bird rose dramatically about 1200' into the air and ejected its big parachute at apogee. Jeff Stai captured this great launch photo, too. Success!
others: preflight, in line | pad prep with dad
Flight 3: Expediter, AT I211
Well, the H242 flew so well we figured we'd stuff a bigger motor in it. The I284 was too much, we decided, so we put a nice little I211 in instead. It was sitting out on the pad after having igniter problems when the rocket next to it (some weird transformer thingy by the infamous guy from Kelly's hobbies) decided to go unstable and loop about 5 times over our rocket. Oh boy. After replacing the igniter two more times, we felt like we had it. The LCO was on the same row launching John Coker's Praying Mantis on a K1100, and accidentally drag raced all of the pads out there, including ours. Oh well, the Praying Mantis shredded, the V2 on the other side of our rocket went unstable, but the Expediter came out of the madness flying straight and true. It disappeared into the sky. It was waaay up there. We walked out to it and listened to the altitude. 3279 isn't much but it is after you haven't flown over 2500 feet before! I was so jazzed that I couldn't get the altitude out right. That was really cool.
