(no subject)
Alright. So heres how my trip went.
Got up at 3.30 am, decided that was way to f*ing early so went back to sleep for 45 minutes. Actually got up at 4.15 am. Loaded up my food and the last bit of stuff I had left to pack. Put the car in neutral and tried to coast out of the drive way so I didn't wake my parents up, who would get pissed if I did. Well I got going pretty good down the drive way, then discovered no power steering or power braking with the engine off. Doh. Had to loudly turn the car on and got out of there right at 4.30am.
Stopped at that sunset donut shop, got 2 donuts, strangely enough the power was out but the oil had gotten hot enough to still cook some donuts.
Mad mad time over to bend, got there about 7.30. Stopped and got some gas, made 18.6 mpg in the 93 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 140k miles, not to bad. Stopped at Starbucks because the AM/PM coffee smelled really shitty. Got out on site at brothers almost exactly at 8.30. So 4 hours, from my driveway to brothers launch site by way of 26 with probably 15-20 minutes worth of stops. Not to bad. Must have average at least 75, as no one on the road between 5 and 7 am.
Nothing much happens till maybe noon or so. Just hung out, ate and talked with a bunch of people.
Scott Bowers and Jim Wilkerson flew a 3" Zinc M motor. Now this was cool. It took of, did some wiggling then did a complete powered loop and took off at near vertical. Landed like 5 miles downrange. Them boys need to check their CP and CG !
The Alex and Rob Lamb paired up to fly a 54mm Alumnaflame. We're not sure if a) the motor had a foward closure blowby or b) the adept altimeter fired during boost but basically bad things happend during powered boost. We went searching for it with little guidance on where it might be. After about 10 minutes Alex basically stumbles onto it. Everything was trashed expect electronics.
Go back to camp. Alex preped a 75mm M motor. Rob flew it in a different rocket. Took off nice, had kick ass tracking smoke for probably 40% of the flight time. Some dude with binocs managed to track it all the way down. No one else picked it up before it was maybe 100' off the deck. We jump in the van, Alex drives us out, and as we turn the 2nd corner I picked it up pretty easily off in the sage. Chute was draped on sage making it easy to spot, and alt was beeping 14,084 ft. Highest flight I've ever witnessed at brothers.
A few scary catos from Ric T, Mike Fisher completely catos a 38mm K2500, we felt the pressure wave from that. Then the worst part of the weekend. Jim Wilkerson and Scott Bowers cato Jim's 4" rocket. Was built from Performance Rocketry compoments. So the kit was $400, motor casing was $200, $200 worth of deployment electronics and to top it all of a gps flight unit ($600). So all in all probably worth close to $1500 and it was compleltly destroyed. Tough day..
Night fall comes. We head out to the burn pile and burn off a bunch of AP scraps.. Don't look at AP directly when its burning.. Like looking at a welders torch..
Anyways, kinda lame night life, everyone else left by 11pm. Dave, Jason and I stayed up till 12.30 or so. By that time I was going straight for 20+ hours. We burned a hell of a lot of sage, I love doing that. Got some pretty good high flames from that. Had a few beers and Mike's hard lemonades.. We eneded up getting a mad bed of coals going and "smelting" the glass mikes bottle. Someone took out all the glass in the morning though.. F that.
Get up in the morning and it was cloudly and nasty looking. Woke up with a 5 minute hangover, but quickly gone. My bed hair was more of a pain.
Anyways, Jason preps his fiberglass rocket and flies it on a 5 grain 54mm. Goodbye to that one for a few months..
Then Rob flies another 3 grain 75mm in his rocket. The same dude tracks it with his binocs and got a good visual on it. By this time we could see a wall of "blackness" heading towards us. I switch out my b-cap for a stocking cap and fleece vest for my gore-tex parka. We head out to pick it up in Rob's truck. After going up the wrong road thinking it turned sooner than it did, we back track and drive up to the hill with 2 trees on it. Figure we'd work our way down the hill with the radios and binoc dude guideing us in. Worked really well, after about 20 minutes of walking downhill he gets us right to it. Rob was about 10 feet away when he saw it, the sage was very high in that area. Alt was beeping 6k or so. Right as we picked it up, this huge line of rain just pounds us. We start heading back up hill to the truck, it was pretty bad. Really heavy rain, some hail and was starting to lightning. We finally get back to the truck after about 20 minutes of skriting the ridge and are completly soaked. Get back to camp, most everyone else had left or was well into tearing down. Took down my ez-up and threw it into the car and headed home.
I stopped at the Redmond airport, just to check it out. They have quite the fire base there. A 1 engine, single seat "SEATS" tanker was there. Got some pictures. Plus I saw a Fed-EX feeder and one of the Ameriflights Beech 99s that UPS uses. That was a fun 10 minute trip.
The rest of the drive home was puncatued with a stop at the Bell, and then driving through many a differet rain squalls. Goverment Camp on Mt. Hood was the worst. Raining so hard the wipers could barely keep up, and still people were driving 65 down the side of the mountain.. Crazy.
Now just 1 possible launch before school.. The big BALLs EX launch down at Black Rock. I'm telling my boss I either need friday off, the 10th or I'll make that my last day and quit. I think I'll get it off.
I asked my dad if he wants to go to BALLs and he said no, because he doesn't have anything to fly.. Tried to explain to him that BALLs isn't for flying rockets really, its more to spectate awesome specatles of rockets flying. He said I should fly down their.. Looked at prices and its about $150 RT at this late. Thats pretty close to the gas bill if I drove. Still not sure what I'm gonna do..
Got up at 3.30 am, decided that was way to f*ing early so went back to sleep for 45 minutes. Actually got up at 4.15 am. Loaded up my food and the last bit of stuff I had left to pack. Put the car in neutral and tried to coast out of the drive way so I didn't wake my parents up, who would get pissed if I did. Well I got going pretty good down the drive way, then discovered no power steering or power braking with the engine off. Doh. Had to loudly turn the car on and got out of there right at 4.30am.
Stopped at that sunset donut shop, got 2 donuts, strangely enough the power was out but the oil had gotten hot enough to still cook some donuts.
Mad mad time over to bend, got there about 7.30. Stopped and got some gas, made 18.6 mpg in the 93 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 140k miles, not to bad. Stopped at Starbucks because the AM/PM coffee smelled really shitty. Got out on site at brothers almost exactly at 8.30. So 4 hours, from my driveway to brothers launch site by way of 26 with probably 15-20 minutes worth of stops. Not to bad. Must have average at least 75, as no one on the road between 5 and 7 am.
Nothing much happens till maybe noon or so. Just hung out, ate and talked with a bunch of people.
Scott Bowers and Jim Wilkerson flew a 3" Zinc M motor. Now this was cool. It took of, did some wiggling then did a complete powered loop and took off at near vertical. Landed like 5 miles downrange. Them boys need to check their CP and CG !
The Alex and Rob Lamb paired up to fly a 54mm Alumnaflame. We're not sure if a) the motor had a foward closure blowby or b) the adept altimeter fired during boost but basically bad things happend during powered boost. We went searching for it with little guidance on where it might be. After about 10 minutes Alex basically stumbles onto it. Everything was trashed expect electronics.
Go back to camp. Alex preped a 75mm M motor. Rob flew it in a different rocket. Took off nice, had kick ass tracking smoke for probably 40% of the flight time. Some dude with binocs managed to track it all the way down. No one else picked it up before it was maybe 100' off the deck. We jump in the van, Alex drives us out, and as we turn the 2nd corner I picked it up pretty easily off in the sage. Chute was draped on sage making it easy to spot, and alt was beeping 14,084 ft. Highest flight I've ever witnessed at brothers.
A few scary catos from Ric T, Mike Fisher completely catos a 38mm K2500, we felt the pressure wave from that. Then the worst part of the weekend. Jim Wilkerson and Scott Bowers cato Jim's 4" rocket. Was built from Performance Rocketry compoments. So the kit was $400, motor casing was $200, $200 worth of deployment electronics and to top it all of a gps flight unit ($600). So all in all probably worth close to $1500 and it was compleltly destroyed. Tough day..
Night fall comes. We head out to the burn pile and burn off a bunch of AP scraps.. Don't look at AP directly when its burning.. Like looking at a welders torch..
Anyways, kinda lame night life, everyone else left by 11pm. Dave, Jason and I stayed up till 12.30 or so. By that time I was going straight for 20+ hours. We burned a hell of a lot of sage, I love doing that. Got some pretty good high flames from that. Had a few beers and Mike's hard lemonades.. We eneded up getting a mad bed of coals going and "smelting" the glass mikes bottle. Someone took out all the glass in the morning though.. F that.
Get up in the morning and it was cloudly and nasty looking. Woke up with a 5 minute hangover, but quickly gone. My bed hair was more of a pain.
Anyways, Jason preps his fiberglass rocket and flies it on a 5 grain 54mm. Goodbye to that one for a few months..
Then Rob flies another 3 grain 75mm in his rocket. The same dude tracks it with his binocs and got a good visual on it. By this time we could see a wall of "blackness" heading towards us. I switch out my b-cap for a stocking cap and fleece vest for my gore-tex parka. We head out to pick it up in Rob's truck. After going up the wrong road thinking it turned sooner than it did, we back track and drive up to the hill with 2 trees on it. Figure we'd work our way down the hill with the radios and binoc dude guideing us in. Worked really well, after about 20 minutes of walking downhill he gets us right to it. Rob was about 10 feet away when he saw it, the sage was very high in that area. Alt was beeping 6k or so. Right as we picked it up, this huge line of rain just pounds us. We start heading back up hill to the truck, it was pretty bad. Really heavy rain, some hail and was starting to lightning. We finally get back to the truck after about 20 minutes of skriting the ridge and are completly soaked. Get back to camp, most everyone else had left or was well into tearing down. Took down my ez-up and threw it into the car and headed home.
I stopped at the Redmond airport, just to check it out. They have quite the fire base there. A 1 engine, single seat "SEATS" tanker was there. Got some pictures. Plus I saw a Fed-EX feeder and one of the Ameriflights Beech 99s that UPS uses. That was a fun 10 minute trip.
The rest of the drive home was puncatued with a stop at the Bell, and then driving through many a differet rain squalls. Goverment Camp on Mt. Hood was the worst. Raining so hard the wipers could barely keep up, and still people were driving 65 down the side of the mountain.. Crazy.
Now just 1 possible launch before school.. The big BALLs EX launch down at Black Rock. I'm telling my boss I either need friday off, the 10th or I'll make that my last day and quit. I think I'll get it off.
I asked my dad if he wants to go to BALLs and he said no, because he doesn't have anything to fly.. Tried to explain to him that BALLs isn't for flying rockets really, its more to spectate awesome specatles of rockets flying. He said I should fly down their.. Looked at prices and its about $150 RT at this late. Thats pretty close to the gas bill if I drove. Still not sure what I'm gonna do..