Flashes of Panic

Yesterday at noon, the CS department model rocket team met for another flying session on the athletic fields. We were pretty lucky with the weather; it had stopped raining just a short time before, and the wind had not yet picked up. We could pick our launch times between gusts.

We made six launches, one each of six rockets, and recovered five of the rockets, which is an excellent record for us. Last time, we did five launches between three rockets, and only recovered one of the rockets. I launched three of my old rockets, which we figured were probably on the order of twenty years old; they’re the ones in red on the left, an Estes Echo, Estes Courier (with decals from a Vector), and an unidentified kit. (Unsurprisingly, none of these are still in the Estes catalog.) I also sent up an Estes Swift (in bright orange,) a new construction. We launched another Swift and a Cosmic Cobra as well.

My “retro” rockets did pretty well. They had all required fin repair, and in some cases I had to replace the shock cord holding the nose cone, streamer, and body together. The Vector and the Echo, respectively my first-ever rocket and my first no-parental-assistance rocket, had unremarkable flights; the Echo, I think, had some issues with the streamer coming out, even though the nose cone detatched, so it hit pretty hard, but only suffered some minimal damage. The larger, unidentified kit landed on a concrete pad and dinged one fin; it’s still flyable, but I’m tempted to get a sheet of balsa and cut a new fin. All three have paint job problems, the big one worst of all, but they’re not really durable enough to be sanded down and repainted. Plus, who cares what it looks like when it’s in the air?

I used quite a few old engines and igniters, as well, and was pleased to discover that after twenty years in a tackle box, they all worked fine.

The Swift, billed as one of Estes’ smallest rockets, is supposed to eject the engine with the ejection charge and then “tumble” back down, being pretty light. It flew quite high, though—high enough that we lost sight of it even before we heard the ejection charge pop. We never saw it come down. The other Swift, which had made a successful flight and recovery last time, didn’t eject its engine; instead, it blasted off its nose cone. We lost sight of it as well, but found the body when we were recovering another rocket.

The Cosmic Cobra was the most dramatic launch of the day. It’s supposed to have a chute for the body and a separate recovery system for the nose cone, but all this stuff packed pretty tight in the tube, and the nose cone didn’t come off at all. Instead, the rocket just augered in nose-first, planting the nose cone two inches into the dirt and buckling the body tube. I think the owner plans to get a new body tube and rebuild for another flight.

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