Day Three of LDRS 17 found the remnants of Friday night's suprise storm awaiting everyone. The previous evening's cloudbursts had left a path of destruction, leaving manufacturer, vendor and flyer's tents upended, with many simply destroyed. The fragile metal frames on many awnings and tents were reduced to twisted piles of junk. The damage took its toll on the launch equipment as well, leaving turmoil for the launch and ground support crew to sort out.

Public Missile's infamous Woody was on hand with more of his beautifully painted creations. This space-inspired rocket features unique airframe sculpting, with various scoops and cockpit-style housings rizing from the airframe. It later flew quite nicely!

Saturday was the day for my Level Three certification attempt using the Dynacom Scorpion featured in an article elsewhere here on this website. The project utilized Dynacom's rock-solid Scorpion, a 4.125" diameter fiberglass rocket featuring a 76mm motor mount. Coupled with Kosdon East's M1130 motor, the initial simulations showed a flight close to 14,000 feet to be expected.

This photo of me with the Scorpion shows it wearing the familiar yellow, white, red and black colors. Weighing 24.3 pounds at check-in, the beast was loaded for bear. Tripoli TAP Committee member Sonny Thompson accompanied Darrell to the away cells to prep the flight. After loading the rocket on the pad, it was time to arm the electronics.

Onboard were a primary recovery system which used the Black Sky Altacc accelerometer as well as a backup recovery system which used an Adept PST-941 timer. Once the electronics were armed, the nosecone/payload cover were reinstalled and retained with six allen screws. Igniter leads were installed, continuity checked, and the area evacuated.

At T+0, the M motor immediately came to life and lifted the Scorpion high into the sky on a column of fire and smoke. It would later be determined the rate of acceleration was in excess of 1280 feet per second, producing over 11 G's! The Scorpion climbed nearly out of sight before arching over, and upon recovery deployment, some anomoly occured which has yet to be explained.

Upon retreival of the rocket, it was learned the payload section had separated from the booster, leaving it to flat tumble from over 12,000 feet.

The strength of the Dynacom kit was readily apparent by the fact that only one fin came loose and a couple stress fractures were visible in the airframe, all easily repaired. The sheer force of the separation had ripped the Rocketman heat shield cleanly in two!

The payload section was eventually recovered six miles downrange, having floated away under the damaged Rocketman R9C canopy. Two hours of scouring the horizon in repetetive criss-crossed tracking turned up the payload section in perfect shape, waiting patiently on the saltbed. The ALTACC data has been recovered and indicated an initial barometric altitude reading of 12,455 feet, over two miles!

Theories? Initial theories were that the timer may have deployed before the rocket reached apogee, but the downloaded ALTACC data seemed to indicate otherwise. Significantly strange data was detected after apogee in the data which has yet to be explained, leaving the failure mode a mystery at this time. This was but one of the dozens and dozens of 'experiences' learned this weekend, as rocket after rocket experienced some sort of failure or another. The carnage rate seemed unusually high to many.

Tom Gonser's 'Pinky and the Brain' Level 3 attempt was caught on film as the M motor powered the two stage beast into the air. The rocket staged perfectly to the upperstage M motor, until something unusual caused a mid-boost airframe failure. An M to an M two stage level 3 attempt is most ambitious, as was found out by Tom when the rangehead was littered with parts falling from the sky. The rocket gods had claimed yet another.

The range was to close at 5pm today, since the annual LDRS banquet was tonight. With all the earlier debris which was scattered from one end of the range head to the other, I made an unwise decision to make a final pass around the area before heading in and found out how slippery the mud under the thin salt crust really was. Yes, that's right, stuck. Thankfully a "local" was on the salt with a four wheel drive equipped with a winch, and a song and a dance later, I was speeding toward the local $.25 car wash.

As I left the salt, I witnessed the approach of a repeat of the prior night's storm, as wind-swept clouds of salt led a cloud dropping rain onto salt.

Tomorrow would reveal a repeat of the previous night's destruction as another round of individuals found themselves owning junk of what had previously been awnings and tents.