Here is my report form the BK Flamer
2005BK Flamer '05 & Hello Hyperteks!
The BK (Black Knights) Flamer weekend 05 at Milson Airfield in the UK was IMHO a huge success.
The organisation was excellent thanks to the hard work of the BK committee (Mark & Liz Perman et al). The vendors were on the whole very friendly. Damian from Uncle Bob's Rocket Shop, Malcolm & Mike from Rockets & Things, Alan & Sean from Apo11o. Congreve were there with the Congreve reloads on show and for some display flights (as the motors are not yet CE marked they can't be sold yet). Deepsky were also in attendance although I don't recall them being pro-active in the weekends flying..
This must have been one of the best weekends for flights and for weather. There were quite a lot of HPR flights. The numerous Hybrid flights (I lost count!) compared favourably with the HPR solid flights I would guess there was one hybrid flight for every couple of HPR solid flights. I'm looking forward to see the flight statistics. I think the total impulse flown of NOX will be close to that of solids? We'll have to wait until the flight stats come out on the BK site. I suppose a lot of credit for the hybrid enthusiasm has to go down to Damian (Uncle Bob) Hall's enthusiasm, and the first outing for 'Uncle Bob's Rocket Shop', which attracted much support & interest from seasoned flyers & hybrid 'virgins' alike.
Saturday saw the first real flying day, with plenty of model & HPR flying. The highlight had to be the Hybrid away cell, overseen by Damian Hall a.k.a. Uncle Bob.
Uncle Bob first gave a repeat of his Hypertek hybrid master class, first seen at UKRA2005. There was an audience consisting of Students from Cranfield University, members of the WRS and many others. It was quite a crowd! The talk was informative and allowed experts and novices alike, to get lots of in-depth information, and then the opportunity to assemble some hybrid motors / tank combinations. Of which Damian seems to have a full collection for everyone to touch and see!
Then it was off to the Hybrid Pad. There were some initial problems getting GSE set up. It just seems that everyone who has the Hypertek stock GSE has problems getting it going! Weird! I spoke to Damian afterwards about this and he's working on it behind the scenes. Along with several other things that seem very interesting indeed!
Then the flying started:
It's difficult to recall a lot of the hybrid flights, I recall; Cranfield University (CURS) launching Jenny Wren on a Hypertek K240, Damian launched Baby Bob on a Hypertek J115, then there was Colin Rowe launching on a Hypertek K240 and several more, although I don't remember much of the detail as all the Hyperteks seemed to pop off one after another and merge into a regular staccato of rasping trails high into the beautiful blue sky!
I LOVE THAT SOUND!
In the mean time I got to fly my Black Brant II on a 2 grain Pro 38 (H153 Smokey Sam) for its maiden flight. It went like a dream. It went higher than Rocksim predicted. The Chute (it was flying single deploy, using motor ejection) popped just at apogee. It must have caught a thermal as it began to come down very slowly before ascending again. After catching some cross-breezes at a few different levels it finally came down to rest in the farm next to the airfield. I timed the whole flight and the descent was 4 minutes, yet it was still close by with a minor zip in the phenolic tube that will easily repair.
Sunday
Prior to setting the range up Colin Rowe gave us all a treat with his newcreation: It consists of one Hypertek 3.5L tank a manifold assembly feeding into 4 injector bell grain assemblies.
Colin wanted to test out the ignition sequence of his creation, "4K n LL", it uses a thermocouple actuated 'pyro' drop down mechanism to initiate launch. Colin, Damian and Pete got everything set up (minus the flight tank) to test out the ignition sequence: It worked a treat!
You can see the fill stem assembly on Uncle Bobs Web site - IIRC it's on of the photos in the headers:
One of the first flights of the day was Chris Brown from the UMIST Rocket-team with his 4" BSD Thor on a Hypertek K240 for another flawless flight, then there was George Rodzinsky with his Enterprise05 on a Hypertek
835cc system. Another flight of Colin Rowe's 'Emma Lady' went next for a really superb flight with the 300cc system.Then a break for lunch.
There were so many people wanting more info on the Hybrid launches, that another mini master class was held for Will Harley & son who were really tempted to fly their BSD 4" Thor. So after some assistance in getting it Hybrid ready (vent holes etc) it was back to the pad.
First off was George Rodzinsky who had been persuaded to fly his 'Enterprise05' again, with a young lad (called Richard) who was fascinated by the whole hybrid experience.
We were running low on NOX at that point, but Sean O'Neill came to the rescue with extra NOX in his sexy 20L tank. Thanks Sean
Cranfield University came next with another Cert flight, but due to a problem which is being investigated it CATO'd on the rail. This was unexpected, and I'm sure CTI will get to the bottom of the problem.
The next two flights would have been Will Harley's BSD 'Thor' on a J250 & my LOC 'Hyperloc 835' for a Hypertek L2 cert attempt. Unfortunately Sean's tank was empty. I'm not actually sure it had much NOX inside in the first place to be honest, but these things happen I suppose.
Later, the Cranfield University team decided to fly their 'Black Sparrow' on a K660 Pro 54 (2437K660-17A six grain Pro 54 reload).The flight was made late into the evening with the help of Dave Warman, Damian Hall and Pete Davey with the hardware kindly supplied on loan by Malcolm & Mike from Rockets & Things. This was a picture perfect flight with perfect recovery. I've only seen a few of these motors flown and they really do 'rock'.
That was the last flight of the weekend. The only thing left was to pack up and go: We set off from Milson at gone midnight to arrive back "oop north" in the very early hours of Monday morning.
A great event with great people and very well organised. Once more: Thank-you Black Knights.
Kevin Timmins.