XRAA 4-3-2004

XRAA 4-3-2004
The weather looked terrible, it had rained the last couple of days and sprinkled on us on the drive to the site, weather.com called for rain all day. But we got lucky and had no rain and windows overhead with clear blue sky all day! The rocket gods were smiling on us. Most of the smart people stayed home and it was Mike Meehl and his crew, the Trailer Trash Crew and a few visitors again this month.


Our reason for trekking 60+ miles each way, possibly in the rain, was our new 5 inch motors were loaded and ready to fire. We wanted to test them before the Boy Scout Jamboree in two weeks. This project has been a long time coming, with a lot of people contributing in one way or another; Marty Gunnerson, Jim Rutkowski, Kyle Yoder, Kevin Patterson, Mike Luna, Ron Zeppin, Glen Yoder, Waysie Atkins and Dave and Mark from Sundevil Machine.


The 10" tube fin was about 75 pounds on the pad and it's 5" 3 grain motor lobed the pig to 4876' burning it's 19lb of propellant in 5 seconds, according to the G-Wiz MC.


Not having any really big chutes, we shoved two R14s in a Rocketman deployment bag, it worked perfectly, once. The cinder blocks were put on the launcher legs to help stabilize it, the motor blast repositioned them!


Jim Rutkowski, Glen Yoder and Waysie Atkins "helping" Marty Gunnerson prep his new 5.5" rocket called "Double Dee". It flew on a 5 grain 75 mm L1200 to 6380' duel deploy recovery by a G-Wiz LC Deluxe 800 and R9 chute for a perfect first flight.


Mike Luna, Waysie Atkins, Marty Gunnerson and Glen Yoder loading Marty's new 8" Mega Dawg for it's flight on the other 5" 3 grain motor. No data due to the batteries coming loose on the G-Wiz on landing.


Beautiful first flight, unfortunately recovery was the problem, the two chutes in one bag trick didn't work twice, the chutes stayed safely tucked the bag. It landed on the hard packed road, crushed the forward airframe and broke a fin. It will be rebuilt and fly again.


Some of Mike Meehl's flights we got pictures of.


The black & white and camo rockets flew on his normally black Smokey propellant. The last picture is of the same 12" x 13' camo rocket flying on the same 4" motor at ARG. For these flights he added titanium machine turnings for a sparky effect, instead he got big bright flame, very few sparks, white smoke and about half the burn time. Our theory is that the machine turnings were mostly consumed in the motor and very few left to form a sparky tail. Not what was expected, but still very cool flights, that's why it's called experimental rocketry!