KCAR Launch Report: Sport Launch
Launch date and time: May 20th at 11:00AM
Launch location: Tickwood Ranch
Launch wind and weather: Overcast
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The weather was pretty good for flying boost gliders and parachute duration models but the cloud deck made visibility of C streamer and altitude models almost impossible. Perhaps I should have made it a sooper “B” meet! Actually B models would have been lost against the white clouds and A models as well. Our biggest “problem” was too few people to run the thing. But we had a good time and, except for altitude we flew all events!
Plenty of folks were there to fly but again not as many as in the past. In fact there were more newcomers than old timers there. If we could have gotten our regulars out to fly as well we’d perhaps have finished the meet.
The sport flying was good with a couple of good CATOS including the first fragmented Econojet one part case F motor I’ve seen that took out the entire motor mount of Christian’s cook-up Super Big Bertha. I think there were 30 or more pieces of phenolic shrapnel resulting from that one!
Dave Lucas had his Big Atomix have a forward bulkhead “blow by” at ignition (29mm motor case with a G something in it) that almost put out the grain but it decided to lite after about three seconds while it hung from the rear ejection motor mount chute. When this happens you have a motor with two nozzles pointing forward and aft. Very firey!!
Six or seven contestents flew streamer and drag race and there were four C egg loft alt entries.
Three BG entries with spotty performance. A perfect boost on my first flight resulted in one of those confounding “Red Barons” and Ian had one too.
Several streamer models were lost or never even seen!
We set up and used for the first time the new tracking scopes and they seemed to work well.
A few other notable flights were some good mid powered flights by several members (alas not me. I had planned to fly the newly completed 3-inch diameter Astron Sprint with a full I220 but was tooooo busy for that).
I was able to fly my brand new closed breech launcher and rocket which was fun and my newly completed drag race/St. Louis arch launch tray model worked great. The drag from three unrolling crepe streamers thirty feet long resulted in a very slow and low C boost I can tell you. Cool!
I finally got home at quarter to eleven in the evening and pack up finished in total dark except for thousands of fire flies. Too cool!!
Thank you to all who helped!
 Look close — you can see the motor parts flying! |
 Christian’s rocket after the CATO |
A few words about the Super C contest. We had a good day in spite of running over and we are improving. The newcomers and people who’ve belonged for a year or so help out quite a bit. We even had six contestents in C streamer not counting me who just did not have the time.
The results for the events held except for Egg loft altitude are as follows.
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Bob, DQed flight one and lost (sight of) flight two. Ian might have placed first except he would NOT seem to understand that spending an hour or more looking for your first flight that was TIMED rather than flying another rocket that you’ll be guarenteed to get back will leave you with NO place at all even though your time was the BEST. That’s why I kept telling him on the radio to let it go and get back here and build or fly another one! NOW he understands how competition works! All you have to do is return one flight in the event for the highest time to count!
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No one else entered the Boost Glider event. I got second with a red baron and a death spiral both of which are rocket Gremlin happenings. My two boosts are as straight as I’ve ever seen and very high for big gliders. Alas, they were wasted.
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The tourny style of competing in Drag Race resulted in just two winners even though a number of fliers entered. I won really because I built a rocket just for drag race. To win you need two out of three points. Three out of three would help. The point value for Drag Race is very small but it is fun!
The egg loft altitude numbers are still being computed. I “think” that my straight boost and smaller rocket won me the event but Dave L. and Bob W.’s flights are more uncertain. I will crunch the numbers tonight with Dave L.’s help!
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Submitted by Dave Bucher NAR 47674.
All photos by Rick Harkins.
HTML code and editing by Tim Burger.
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Page created on May 31, 2006.
