Flashes of Panic

So the CS grad students finally delivered on our promise (threat?) of a group rocket launch. Five of us headed across the street to the athletic fields to launch three rockets from two pads.

One of the rockets was mine, an Estes “Wizard” which I had opted, in cheerful disregard of the packaging, to paint in fluorescent orange. Because the orange paint was semi-transparent, I spent a few half-hours over three evenings last week applying first a base coat of white, then two layers of orange. The result was even brighter than the signal-tape recovery streamer which was supposed to provide visibility. I had the first launch, with an A8-3 engine, and it was a good one, with the rocket eventually landing in mid-center field in the softball field. We decided to move a ways upwind before launching again.

One of the other two rockets was a tiny little thing, I think a Quark, basically way of putting fins on an engine, and it didn’t even have a recovery method (Estes calls this “tumble recovery.”) It “tumbled” into the baseball field, and we didn’t retrieve it immediately. Instead, we turned to launching a Patriot (complete with decals, so it must’ve been a kit-build like my Alpha.) With an A engine, it got off the pad, but didn’t make it a hundred feet up before stalling; it barely got its chute out in time to land softly. I donated one of my C engines (that’s four times as much net thrust, for those keeping track at home,) for the second flight, and put a B in my Wizard. Then we tried a “drag race:” with both rockets on the pad, we counted down and pushed buttons at the same time.

Bs must light quicker than Cs, because I was off the pad before the Patriot was even blowing smoke. Zip! Beautiful flight, right into the sun; I heard the pop and saw the tracking smoke from the end of the engine. Then I lost track of it, bright orange and all; none of us saw it fall.

Probably we were distracted by the Patriot, which went even higher. It popped its chute beautifully, and then proceeded to drift right out of the fields and into the neighborhood, much like my Alpha did last week. (We must learn not to launch on breezy days.) We tracked it down but couldn’t spot its final landing spot. Two of us wandered around the neighborhood for a few minutes, checking yards and rooftops, but didn’t find it.

My guess on the Wizard is that the ejection charge didn’t pop the nose cone out at all; instead, it ejected the engine itself, which I did find shortly after we retrieved the Quark from the baseball field. That means the rocket probably came down nose-first, and pretty fast. I rolled around the fields on my bike but didn’t see any trace of it. I’ll keep my eyes open, but I’m not too worried. Now I’m thinking about what to build (and launch) next. I might get one of those Quarks, but I think I’m really interested in boosting a big engine.

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