ROCStock XIV

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ROCStock XIV

Over the weekend of November 9-11, 2001, a large group of rocketeers convened on Lucerne Dry Lakebed north of Apple Valley to fly rockets. Perfect flying conditions were present on Saturday, although a slight wind made for a less than optimal Sunday. Nevertheless, hundreds of flights still took place. The story of some of those flights is presented here.

Having arrived a bit late on Saturday, I was nervous that I had missed some of the action. I was also worried that I couldn't get my big flight for the weekend off: a 6" rocket with an M1419. We never did manage to get that one off, but some other spectacular flights did take place.

The (in?)famous Gates Brothers (www.gbrocketry.com) came out to play with an 11.41" rocket they called Porthos. Porthos was loaded up for its first all blue-thunder flight with an M2500T and 6 K1100T motors- the maximum amount of propellant to be flown in California on one flight. These so-called "Blue Thunder" motors produce a blue flame and a higher amount of oomph (technical term) to help get your rocket off the ground faster. They counted down and Porthos took off the pad like a screaming animal. It is interesting to note that when you launch more than one blue thunder motor at once, they tend to make a loud screaming noise. Anyways, Porthos was flying on a good course, and then disaster struck. The rocket arced over at apogee and attempted to deploy a parachute. However, the 'chute got stuck in the body of the rocket and Porthos came in for a hard landing. Ouch. One of the fins was sheared clean off, and there was some other damage done too. However, I don't think the brothers were deterred as they continued to have high spirits throughout the weekend.

One of the largest and most successful projects of the weekend was Kurt Gugisberg's Big Purple. BP was loaded with a 3" diameter Aerotech L1120W reload. The rocket thundered off the pad and had a beautiful flight and a perfect 2-step recovery on the way down.

The other major flight that I documented on Saturday was the attempt to launch Necessary Evil, a 6" by 10 foot rocket built by Wedge Oldham. This launch was to be on a new M1550R Redline, a motor designed to produce an awesome red flame instead of the normal white flame. However, victory was not to be Wedge's today, as the motor suffered a catastrophic failure on the pad. This catapulted the rocket up the rail and about 50 feet in the air, followed by a hard landing on the lakebed surface.

Sunday morning, my arrival on the lakebed was in a more timely fashion. After arriving around 7:15 AM, we got out of the car and noticed the clouds overhead and the 10 MPH breeze. We had planned to fly our 4" by 7 foot Arcas today on an L1000 (projected to go over 9500 feet), however it quickly became apparent that we would have a hard time getting it back. So I prepped a smaller bird for flight, and took more notes and pictures.

My one flight of the day was a rocket that I called Lil' Nuke on an F23J. To make things more interesting, I decided to launch this rocket simultaneously along with Kurt Gugisberg's Graduator, loaded with a G104T. We loaded our rockets, and they were launched. Kurt's won by a fraction of a second, darnit.

More flights followed. Brian Sutton flew his beautiful 5" Gemini-Titan. This rocket was a faithful replica of the 1960's rocket that was used to launch a 2 man capsule into earth orbit. The rocket flew on a 54mm Aerotech J275W motor, and recovered safely.

Some rockets used a different form of propulsion than most other rockets there. These unique vehicles used so-called "hybrid" motors, which use Nitrous Oxide for an oxidizer and ABS plastic or polyethylene fuel grains. These motors tend to burn with little smoke and interesting sound effects: depending on the manufacturers, they tend to buzz, whistle, or roar. I covered two of these flights on Sunday, one Hypertek (the buzzing kind) and two RATTWorks (the whistling kind). Joe Mullin flew a Hypertek K240 powered rocket called (rather cleverly) Can o' Whoop Gass (we'll let you decide what the meaning behind that one is). Dave McCue flew a PML Aurora on a RATT K240. Note to self: never stand close to a RATTWorks motor. The darn things scream so loud I couldn't hear for about two minutes afterwards! The picture was great, as was the flight. Little did I know the horrors of the RATT motors to come! Dave Griffith (no, not all guys who fly RATTWorks motors are named Dave) flew his Dic'N'Along on an I90 motor. I figured that since it was only an I I could get relatively close to it. 5-4-3-2-1 and I hear the igniter grain light in the motor. I thought that I may have been a little too close and started stepping back when the rocket lit and SCREAMED into the air! It was even louder than the K240. This is due to a more efficient nozzle on the K240 not producing as much turbulence and thus not as much noise. The rocket recovered fine and I stumbled my way back to the flight line.

But enough about alternative forms of propulsion. Getting back to the good ol' composite motors, Bill Farr proceeded to fly a rather large rocket on Saturday. Stochastic was 6" in diameter, tall, and ready to punch some sky on a K650T. The rocket was constructed out of 6" phenolic with one layer of 5.5oz Kevlar over the tube. Fins were carbon-reinforced (surface mount- he must be crazy) 0.125" G-10. The rocket flew great, and I actually got a close-up launch picture without going deaf! Bill said that this rocket is built to be a booster for a large 2 stage project called "Stochastic Fource", to fly on an M2400T in the booster staging to 2 K485TH Turbo Hybrids in the sustainer, airstarting 2 K700Ws. I've seen many successful, spectacular flights of both stages. When will a 2 stage flight be happening? What is wrong with this guy? Stochastic came back with a broken fin.

As the launch was wrapping up, Chuck Cerice flew an awesome rocket just as I was about to leave. His Ultimate Endeavor flew on a K700 and airstarted 3 J350s. Great flight and an awesome airstart, with the 3 J350s really kicking the rocket in the butt and moving it up fast.

Pulling away from the lakebed, we could hear the final countdown coming over the PA system. The last rocket of ROCStock 14 flew into the air, a final offering to the gods of rocketry and fire.