November 2010 Launch Report

by Louise Ferrell....... I hope everyone had a great time at our ROCC Thanksgiving monthly launch in November. We had an incredible number of fliers on 11/20 and a smaller group on 11/21. Conditions were excellent both days with the winds very calm on Sunday. Temperatures both days were in the 60's with few clouds in the sky. It was great to see everyone after such a long break from flying in Cabarrus County. Thanks for all the help setting and tearing down the launch. Everyone’s efforts were greatly appreciated! Ken Allen was present for both days and a number of fliers took advantage of the shopping opportunity. Ken should be there for the December launch so bring cash and/or cards; remember it is Christmas time!

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Turkey Day treats

First, a big THANK YOU to Sandy Houston, for his 2 Slow Motion video compilations that he's allowed me to post on the ROCC YouTube site... check 'em out.

Second, this from the NASA ISS tracking site, located HERE 

Look for the 2 that have elevations of 72 and 84 degrees. Those will pass almost directly overhead in Charlotte. Happy Turkey Day!

DR

THE FOLLOWING ISS SIGHTINGS ARE POSSIBLE FROM MON NOV 22 TO TUE DEC 07

SATELLITE	LOCAL	DURATION	MAX ELEV	APPROACH	DEPARTURE
	DATE/TIME	(MIN)	(DEG)	(DEG-DIR)	(DEG-DIR)

ISS	Wed Nov 24/06:08 AM	< 1	15	15 above SSE	15 above SSE
ISS	Thu Nov 25/06:32 AM	4	72	17 above SW	15 above NE
ISS	Fri Nov 26/05:24 AM	1	18	16 above SSE	18 above SE
ISS	Sat Nov 27/05:50 AM	4	84	26 above SW	16 above NE
ISS	Sun Nov 28/06:16 AM	3	24	18 above WNW	17 above N

November Launch

Update Sunday night... great flying weekend everyone! Thanks to Kip for getting the last of the crops out for us and thanks to everyone who pitched in and helped make it a great weekend.

Looking towards our launch window on the 20th & 21st, we need to pray for some rain. I'll explain. Kip is trying to get the remaining soy beans out of the fields. It's been so dry for so long that he can only harvest for a short time before the equipment gets so hot it sets fire to the machinery. (This has already happened at least once.)

So what we could really use is some nice rain. Just enough to wet down the crops but not so much that it gets so wet he can't work.

If Kip can get all the crops out, then we need to think about the danger of fire in the field should anything go wrong. The idea has been floated to get the vol. Fire Dept. to come out and hang with us for a day just to make sure. This would need an additional donation from all of the fliers and probably mean a single day launch.

Thursday night update, Ken Allen from Performance Hobbies will be at the launch this weekend. If you need something specific, you can contact him through this LINK.

Word is that he expects to be there both days. 

Team America Rocketry Challenge 2011

Registration ends November 30th

We're right in the middle of the TARC registration process, which started on the 8th of September and runs untill the 30th of November.

Some basic info from the NAR website:

Team America Rocketry Challenge 2011's target flight duration of 40-45 seconds is measured from the moment of rocket liftoff until the egg payload lands. The target flight altitude of 750 feet is measured by an onboard electronic altimeter. The top 100 teams from among all those who have entered will meet in a final fly-off competition on May 14, 2011 at Great Meadow, The Plains, VA. These top 100 teams will be selected based on the duration and altitude scores reported from local qualification flights that they conduct in front of an NAR Senior (adult) member observer at their choice of time up until the flight deadline of April 4, 2011

More information can be found HERE. I know that we have plenty of senior members available (some of us more "senior" than others!) to help and I believe that we've had 2 teams that members have mentored to take first place in the contest. If you're looking for a mentor for a team, or looking for a place to fly your research and qualification flights, use the email link and drop us a line!

Curiosity... watch the build!

Hey all. 2 days ago a ustream feed went live that is just too cool... the clean room where they're building the next Mars rover, the enormous Curiosity. Check it out HERE.

This thing is, for a rover, HUGE! Its about 8 feet long, 6 feet high without things deployed, the wheels are like 20 inches in diameter, it's like they put Spirit in an up-scale ray.

Thanks to Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, for pointing it out.... DR

Bob's gets a "Drive-through" window

This, from Ralph, according to WSOC-TV:

"Just saw on WSOC TV that an man parking his car at Bob's hit the gas instead of the breaks and crashed into Bob's, sounds like around supper time. Had we flown, some of us may have been there. How ironic... The Rocket Gods were smiling on us in an unsual way.

Looks like he came through the wall between the door and the side room were we normally sit.  Looks bad as they had replace that whole wall. Said the driver and two customers were transported to the hospital, one or two had life threatimg injurries."

Sometimes you just don't know why things happen the way they do, but it sure is ironic sometimes!

DR

October launch window

This, from Kip via Ralph this morning:

OK, Finally got up with Kip last night and had a good conversation about a lot of things, most importantly about the launch.

The corn fields to the north are full of corn shucks left over from the harvest, he decided to leave it that way versus bush hogging it like he normally does.  They have already planted the grain for the wheat and barley winter crops.  So basically the field is full of dry fuel.  The soybean field is drying down now, its not green as it was last month.  The drought index has us in the "Abnormally dry" area with no rain in the last two weeks. Not Good. The corn crop harvest this year has not yielded what he was expecting, plus the soybeans don't look like they will give a good yield either. 

 

Next Item:  Weather. Since we'll be on the backside of this front coming through Thursday with not much rain forecasted.  The winds per Wunderground.com are forecasted to be from the NNW at 6mph in the afternoon, blowing straight to the beans.

 

Plus, Race traffic Saturday would make it rough for people coming in from the North.

 

Based on all the conditions I say we wait till next month to attempt a launch once all crops are out.  Kip would be OK with us to wait as well.

 

He could not give me a date yet on the harvest of the beans, they have to dry down to a certain point before the harvest.  It has usually been the 1st or 2nd week of November in the past.  The dryer we stay the sooner it will happen.

 

Thanks,

Ralph

Science Channel "The Rocket Project"

Check this out: 

Here's the description: Eight high school students begin a journey to design, build and launch a rocket out of the stratosphere. As inevitable delays and mechanical troubles set in, even a healthy dose of support and know-how may not be enough to get the rocket off the ground.

I caught this and it was wonderful. Very inspiring. It will be repeated once more at 4:00 am on Monday morning so set your recorders!

DR

Welcome!

Welcome to the "new look" for the ROCC site! In a short while we'll move the net pointer for rocketrycarolina.org to point to this site.

Members will be able to get news, RSS feeds from the main news site, participate in discussion boards, post photos and leave comments on those photos. And it will be hosted on a server that's a lot faster and more reliable than we've ever had before.

Look around... get the feel of the place. It's still under construction, so bear with us as we refine it. If you're a member of ROCC and haven't gotten an email from us please send a request to rocketrycarolina at gmail dot com and let us know.

Doc Russell

Thank Yous, and a request...

A HUGE thank you to all the folks that came out and helped with the Y-Guides demo to make it a success. There were a few give and takes on the field, but all went fairly well considering. Bob lost a casing in the trees, and there was a rather nerve wracking finale', but all in all it was a good show and they were pleased. The request part? Well, that finale' I spoke about? The last rack of the night had a G-71 on it, and the nozzle had something wrong. At least that's what we think happened. Anyway, the rocket hung up coming off the 1/4" rod and basically swung on the end of the rod in a 360 degree arc before it ripped the lug apart and hit the ground, where it skimmed toward the line of parked cars for about 50 feet. It stopped short, then unceremoniously fired the ejection charge without further problems. Amazingly it didn't catch anything on fire. (I thought we were going to really need those fire guys!) Here's the request part. I don't know if it would have been safer or not, but the 1/4" rod was not strong enough for the rocket weight and motor power. I really think that we need to stress the use of the rails for G-plus projects. Please, think about using rail buttons if possible. They don't cost that much and now that we have plenty of rails we really don't have any reason not to. DR

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