Skyshots in June is the traditional early regional launch in the Texas panhandle normally held on the third weekend of June, but this year it was held over the Memorial Day Weekend due to a scheduling conflict with an educational launch at the field.  The normal plan is for two days of research activity and one day of commercial flights.  This year with the schedule change and those that planned to fly it was decided to make the entire launch research capable.

Many very good and large projects were expected and even with a couple that could not attend, we had many good projects with spectacular flights, some very spectacular.  What follows is a story about some of the projects and flights that did come to the launch.

Jim Jarvis' HighCarbYen awaiting the religious experience riding on a pillar of fire.

Team Yen sets the carbon fiber creation up while Jim checks the launch angle.

Magic twig make totem pole turn into fire stick. Magic twig good.

VIDEO: HighCarbYen moves on out.

Jenny and John Entgen made the drive from Houston. It looks like Jenny is doing all the work here.

In spite of the lack of help, Jenny made it to the pad with 22,000Ns ready to rock.

SARS of San Antonio was on hand with their project sporting six M motors.

Prepping six M motors takes a little time.

Michael Wilkins' Nike Zeus makes an great impression.

The Nike Zeus being raised into position on the automated rail.

Time to work magic twig again. Magic twig make fire. Fire good.

VIDEO: This can't be good.

'X' marks the spot. The point of impact is plainly marked.

First up was a collaboration of Jim Jarvis, who still refers to me as the devil on his right shoulder, and Pat Gordzelik.  Jim was returning to the scene of the crime where he flew the most enthusiastic Level 3 certification flight in history at LDRS 25 with the same bird (See HighCarbYen: Jim Jarvis’ N powered carbon fiber screamer — Rocketry Planet, October 03, 2006), now on its fourth flight, to try one of Pat’s big 98mm Wayside White N1942 motors for the group research N motor altitude record. 

After many communications and much research, Jim decided on the altimeters to fly and have reliable readings to claim the altitude record stand without challenge — he used one PerfectFlight 45K, one G-Wiz MC, and my copy of the new G-Wiz LCX.  As always, Jim is a good engineer and tested everything to the max before trusting his work of art, homemade, rocket to just any deployment scenario, so I figured that it would be a flawless flight and recovery. 

With his preparations complete, the GPSflight unit happy with ten satellites and three altimeters checked out, the bird was taken to the pad for a noon launch.  Pat called in the extended altitude portion of the waiver and we owned the sky for 50,000 vertical feet and five miles in all directions. Man, you have to love the POTROCS crew and especially Pat for making this waiver happen. 

The button was pushed and the rocket thundered skyward under almost eight seconds of Pat’s power.  Needless to say, once the motor burns out and the rocket is over 20,000 feet, you will not even see it with binoculars so we anxiously awaited Jim calling out of the locations and altitudes via the live downlink from his GPSFlight, which showed the rocket coming down E/NE of the flight line about two miles out.

Visual contact was made just before the main deployed and a good landing was witnessed by all in the distance.  Recovery was easy, with a drive to within a half-mile of the rocket and a straight walk to it in the pasture.  After retrieval, we went back to the prep table to pull out the altimeters and get the official readouts for the record. 

Lynn 'B. Nuts' Bryant was enlisted to be the third witness required for a record certification and when the altimeters were read out, the PerfectFlight and G-Wiz MC were within less than a hundred feet of each other (an average of 31,500 for the record) while my G-Wiz LCX read 118,000 feet — I thought that would have made a good record!  Four flights on HighCarbYen, three that were over 30,000 feet, and not a mark on the bird. Oh, it does melt rail buttons above Mach 2.

Next up were the Entgens, a couple from the Houston area that have gotten into some serious altitude.  Their rocket was a 4.5 inch minimum diameter screamer with a Loki 22,000Ns 115mm motor and a propellant John calls “Formula 13” (not superstitious in any way).  Prep work for this couple is actually fun to be around, classic mad scientist work, with John doing the motors/airframe and Jenny doing the deep thinking electronics (both are very capable of doing both functions), not to mention being right next to the Jim Jarvis prep area and all the smack talk ("my GPS has more satellites than yours"). 

It was nice of the Entgens to hold their launch for a little bit while we recovered Jim’s rocket, so after our return the rocket was waiting on the pad to be armed and dangerous.  With all eyes on the sky and a firm push of the button, the rocket accelerated into the fine Wayside air at 28 G’s — you could hear the air trying to get out of the way. 

One note about trackers and GPS, they are great to have and when the rocket is equipped with them, much more likely to return to sender but when you land 200 yards from the flight line in full view of everyone from over 34,000 feet, it's kind of overkill. 

The function of the flight and recovery were just about perfect but the motor had a burn-through just before burnout, toasting the case just above the nozzle, doing minimal damage to the fincan, and the nozzle was also cracked.  Now for the smack, the altitude was 34,975 feet, which Jim Jarvis will be quick to point out is 16 feet short of his field record from LDRS.

The final major project of Saturday was one by the SARS club out of San Antonio. This beasty was a large fincan, with a tapered coupler to a smaller recovery/avionics section, utilizing six 75mm motor mounts.  The plan was to call on two AMW M1900 blue motors to get things off the pad, two Cesaroni M1400’s to airstart first and to keep things going with a final pair of AMW M1350 white flame motors to finish off the parade.  It took two of the folks just to get the motors built and ready. 

The participants in this endeavor were Ray Kinsel, David Jones, Mike McGuire and Edward Medina.  About 2:00 in the afternoon, this thing was taken out to the pad for flight, and with about 38,000Ns of motors loaded, it promised to be quite a flight. 

The two blue motors hit right off and burned to an altitude of around 1000 feet and then the wait: one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand start, there go the Cesaroni’s.  Well, now the rocket was about 15 degrees away from the flight line, heading due east. When the Cesaroni’s were through, it was over seven seconds for the AMW 1350’s, and it was now heading out of sight. 

What was going to be a 20,000-plus foot flight now became a 15,000 foot flight and it landed about 3.5 miles downrange on the Palo Duro canyon rim.  While the crew was out recovering this, a thunderstorm developed right over the canyon and collapsed after being listed as severe. This caused high winds to come at the flight line and brought with it some rain, so the site was secured and everyone left. 

Our intrepid recovery team out in the field was up close and personal with the storm and the 60-plus MPH winds and up to one-inch hail. Some folks are dedicated to rocketry. The entire rocket, with the exception of the nosecone, was recovered then and the nosecone was recovered after the water went down and they were able get to it the next day. 

The motors were set to start with one second of time between each set so it is still not known why the motors started at three-and-one-half and seven seconds after each previous burn.  Other than being wet and frustrated with the weather, the rocket came out fine and our rocketeers recovered from their weather escapades OK.  The side note to this is the fact that a simple four-wheel drive Chevrolet Tahoe can pull a big brawny Ford V10 4X4 out of the ditch after running off the road.

One of the highlights of the day Sunday, and of the launch, was Michael Wilkins’ Nike Zeus. This rocket was a very good technical work and was quite a sight to see.  Keeb (yes this is the Keebler of LDRS “Pimp my Ride” fame) made his own tubes by rolling them on a mandrel using three each layers of carbon fiber, Kevlar, and fiberglass.  The tubing was quite light for the strength exhibited and made for a good surface to paint. 

The fins were a vacuum-bagged lay-up of the same three layers of carbon fiber, Kevlar, and fiberglass over a foam core that yielded strong fins that were light and aerodynamically shaped.  The internal structure consisted of marine plywood rings and a motor mount for a total of five motors: one six-inch core and four 54mm outboards. 

Keeb downplayed the great looks and fine finish by claiming that the final paint was done so fast that there were a lot of pinholes and the black had not been put on yet.  One thing that did not go quite as planned was the fit of the core six-inch motor — that thing just would not go into the motor tube. So the evening before, many helpers did a lot of sanding and fitting to get the motor in and it was still tight.  The power for the flight was to be all Wayside White with the core motor a full O and the outboards were two 54mm 3200Ns L’s to help with a bit more kick off the pad. 

At the field on Sunday, the rocket was quite a sight to see in the prep area and the one project that all spectators were congregating around.  Measuring 11.5 inches in diameter and twenty feet tall, it was a dominating sight.  During the day, the preparations continued and many folks had their pictures taken next to the rocket. 

About 4:00, the assembly was complete and the rocket was hauled out to the waiting pad in my truck, with an army of helpers to assist in getting the 235-pound behemoth onto the rail.  Due to this being a large project, it was placed further out into the field and the final launch angle was six degrees away from the flight line, so that if anything went wrong the rocket would go a harmless direction.

Keeb's pad is a neat thing since it uses a screw drive to erect the rocket from horizontal to vertical, making for a great scale-like presentation of the rocket going to battery.  Being the experienced pad rat that Keeb is, the climbing and arming of the rocket went smoothly and the final checks were finished just after 5:00, with Pat installing three of his special Thermite heaters into the rocket before returning to the flight line. 

Pat took over the controls, announced the flight as being either "spectacular" or "real spectacular" and then gave the countdown.  All three motors fired up, coming to pressure immediately when the button was pushed, and the rocket started up the rail.  For some reason still not understood, the core O motor just quit about the time the rocket got to the top of the rail, and the two 54mm motors were not up to the task of keeping the large rocket going straight. The rocket took a decided lean to the north and about one second later, the core motor came back up to full song. 

Unfortunately, the damage was already done. The rocket accelerated to around 500 MPH before impacting the ground a half-mile away, close to the windmill on the north side of the water course. That large a rocket hitting the ground that fast really caused a fuss, and the splash was over fifty feet high, with a debris field 50 yards wide and 150 yards long.  Having recovered aircraft wreckage, the amount of carnage was no surprise to me although still impressive.  Others were truly awestruck by the amount of damage, proving the formula of mass times velocity squared. 

Most of the rocket ended up in the hole with about 40% being recovered by all of us policing the field to clear as much for the landowners as possible.  At first, everyone was kind of in shock but just about all the folks at the launch came out to help with recovery. 

This kind of incident shows just how well hobby safety measures help to keep everyone at a launch safe.  Without the setback distance and the field call of altering the launch angle, the rocket could very well have gone anywhere. With our listed setback distances and a competent RSO at the field, Pat Gordzelik, making calls in favor of safety, the rocket went in a direction that it was not going to hurt anything other than dirt.  After all the work and expense, everyone felt real bad for Keeb and he handled it like a true gentleman, not offering blame anywhere or showing a down-trodden attitude.

There were many more flights of smaller size and altitude — not to lessen the accomplishments of the fliers of those — but this is a highlight reel showing a couple of snapshots of the activity and some of the flavor of a POTROCS research launch.  The crew at POTROCS are great to fly with and the field is about the best you could ask for. 

One note about the POTROCS field: Wylie Byrd felt so strongly about supporting our activities that he actually wrote it in his will that the club was going to continue the activity at the site as long as proper stewardship was exhibited. Knowing Pat and the crew, it will always be there.  Finally a note about Pat and Retta Gordzelik: no better couple could be found for supporting the hobby, as not only are they the most gracious hosts at the field, they open their house up for fliers to meet and greet as well as use the shop he has for any supporting efforts.

For Rick's contribution of this article, he will receive a free one year subscription to LAUNCH Magazine or a free Rocketry Planet T-shirt. This sponsorship is made possible by our friends at MM Publishing, Inc., the producers of LAUNCH Magazine and Graphix & Stuff, producers of high quality hobby apparel and vinyl signage. Want your own free gifts? Read the program details page for complete information.

08-13-2007 08:50 AM  #1
dixontj93060 Certified Level Two   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 39	Rick, Great report; nice to see some familar faces from down Texas-way. -Tim