Today we got back a rocket that was about a half mile away (the rocket arced :( ) So far 2900 feet (estimated) is the highest I have gone. Post stories about losing, finding, soaring, and crashing your rockets here :)
It is painful to live in a world where innocent posts like this seem more like "bait" for another motive... especially when the "wow" facts of the post is far below what has been achieved in the hobby in general.
I lost a D RG model at NARAM-36 that thermalled out of sight. It was found a month later 17 miles from the launch site. The person who found it shipped it back to me. I still have it.
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!
I just started a few months ago. I won't be able to beat you guys who have been doing it longer. I thought a half mile was a far distence for what we have launched.
"Duane Phillips" wrote in news:fBhkc.338$AV4.14541@attbi_s04:
If can you find one, try a "MachBuster" on a G55. For my second one, it was found 2 miles away and 18 months later (flat desert - it was sunburned on one side). The first one is still MIA. The second one has been gone (again) for about 2 years now after an F101 flight. Still got one unassembled in the original bag'o parts.
The "Machbuster" was a min diameter bird, designed to "bust mach", and gosh, they were fun to watch! (machbusters were made by Rocket Vison, now OOB)
Wow Bob! What was the cause of so much drift? Were there high winds, was it done on purpose? How did you expect the fight to turn out? Sorry for the questions but 18 miles seems so extreme.
I don't know about max altitude, since I've rarely used an altimeter. I've had to go 2-3 miles on many occasions to find a rocket. Lost a camera in 1991 that had been launched from a high desert area and hit a very fast stream of wind at altitude. Wasn't even a very high flight, only used a mid-range H motor. The rocket was found two miles away, right at the top of the last ridge overlooking the low desert. I figure the camera must have cleared the ridge and gone another 2-3 miles, maybe more, before reaching the valley.
Tom Allen developed the Extreme rockets line. We marketed the Skunkworks Stealth BB II, that is a beefed up Estes kit, made to handle the G125. I flew mine on a G125 twice and got it back. Estimated alt. 5,200 feet.
My son and I scratch built an upscale of the Estes Black Brant II. The airframe is from Hawk Mountain, it's wound fiberglass. It's so strong you can stand on it. I rolled my own nose cone from fiberglass, kevlar and graphite composite cloth. The fins are layed up using G10 cores, plywood laminates for airfoiling and resonance dampening, Kevlar plys so I could call them bullet proof and a graphite composite sanding veil.
After several flights up here, in Oregon and at LDRS 1999, Argonia, we let it all hang out at LDRS in California, 2001. Using a K700 for propulsion, the biggest motor that would fit, we punched that puppy straight up, narry a wiggle, in excess of mach 1, to
12,116 feet AGL. It coasted straight up for 21 seconds! My son and others saw it the entire time. It came down only about 300 yards (270 metres) away. Lucerne is a great place to fly rockets as high as you can try.
7845 vertical, and about 2km away horizontal. Held the CAR 'I' altitude record briefly, before Vince Chichak bested it by a couple hundred ft a few months later.
There seemed to be very high mid-level winds that day, and my last-minute decision to fly a walston with this rocket allowed me to finally get it back. But not before slogging through hectares of some of the most immuno-toxic wild plants I've ever encountered in my life. My friend and I came back from the recovery exercise with streaming eyes, violent sneezing, and wheezing. Fortunately, somebody had brought some anti-histamines with them to the launch.
The Walston worked out well. At one point, no matter where I pointed the receive antenna, the signal strength didn't change. I go to take a step away to see if I can get a change in signal strength, and nearly step on my minimum-diameter rocket--buried in the aforementioned toxic plant cover...
5.3 pound fiberglassed LOC EZI-65 with a Missile Works RRC2 for dual deployment on an Aerotech J570 to 5,170 feet, main parachute deployed at 300 feet and recovery walk of about 100 yards.
My personal highest is 10,000. I've helped a friend put his rocket up to
21,500. Should be able to break 30k this year if all goes well. Most stuff comes down within a mile of the launch site as I don't fly high when the winds are up. With wind, I have flown 'I' class motors 3,000-4,000 ft and had to go out 2 or 3 miles to pick it up. On a windy day at Blackrock the rockets don't stop when they hit the ground. The just keep going. You have to be in your car to catch up to them. I tend to just wait for calm winds anymore.
Cause? Texas thermals. Things really are bigger down there. Winds were not bad. I chased the model a mile through the JSC complex, and lost sight of it when it was a dot in the sky. I couldn't resolve which dot was my glider and which was the sweat rolling into my eyes.
It was a C RG (I think I said D last time, it was a D RG designed for C6/A3 that I flew on just the C6) contest model. Actually multi-round, so you get
2 models and 3 flights. First flight was a different model off a piston and the piston went with the glider, resulting in a poor flight. Second flight no piston and the wing ripped off under boost (maybe undetected damage from the first flight). All I had for backup was my old D RG, so I flew it on the C6. Boost was poor, arcing from vertical to almost horizontal by ejection. Sort of half a "C". But it was perfectly trimmed, and just settled into a flat circle, slowky rising with the lift. THe higher it got, the faster it went up.
The model MAXed easilly. I don't recall if that was good enough for a place int he event or not. I didn't expect it to do that good. ANd when I lost sight of it, I certainly didn't expect to see it again. But I put name and address labels on all my models that include the magic word: "REWARD!".
A month later my wife gets a call from someone with a heavy southern accent "Yall ain;t gonna b'lieve waat aaI faund". The guy was a surveyor out in an empty field. I told him where I launched it from, and he said that was 17 miles from where he found it. I would assume that a surveyor would know such things.
The materials in the glider were worth less than $5. THe labor was at least
30 hours to build. The story alone was worth the $25 reward I sent the guy.
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!
So far the highest (estimated) I've done is about 2600' with an EZI-65 using an I211. BUT, the reason why I came back to the hobby was because I opened my big mouth and said it should be possible to hit real space and someone said "Ok, let's do it!" Thus I'll be going higher soon as possible. The one I'm building the sims say 12000'+ and Mach
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