November Launch information as of 11/5/09

Farm Crops may be out of the Field = Tentative Launch If Kip sticks to the schedule he mentioned to Ralph we may have a launch this month on our normal 3rd weekend (21 - 22 Nov). Stay tuned to here for more info. Update (via Ralph): Spoke to Kip tonight (11/04/09). The front field, next to the house, was cleared today. He says the field next to the Wind Sock is still drying down. He thinks by early next week it will be ready. He feels we can go ahead and post the schedule for Nov. 21st, 22nd. Baring an equipment malfunction we should be ready to fly. He will contact us when the harvest is complete. Doug: please check on Waiver status, I believe we had to renew by December 31st last year. Let�s get that paper work in plenty of time for the renewal. Back to Brad's original note: Performance Hobbies on Site Ken Allen has said he will be on site assuming we have a launch. It's been a long dry spell so if you have any of those special projects planned now's the time to contact Ken and make sure he brings you the goods. Or, if you need to ask a question, call him at (202)723-8257. NAR HPR Competition Rules Any interest in running something like this in January? This is officially announced now. The official (provisional) rules are located here. It would be nice to have a HPR contest on tap for one of our winter launches. Pick out your favorites and discuss this. Thanks Thanks to all who help make this a great club. We have had good participation with setup and tear down and plenty of additional help in other areas. Pat yourselves on the back - you make this club a great place to have fun. Sincerely, Brad Shea ROCC President roccprez@rocketrycarolina.org

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THUNDERFLAME

OK Folks... I know most of us are suffering withdrawal. We're starting to look sideways at that big wheel just sitting there in the driveway thinking "Gosh, I'll bet I could strap a couple of J's to the side of that thing and get it going up the hill really good!" Well Brad got a note from Tom Henderson yesterday that peaked my interest even though I've got a previous engagement on that day. Tom's getting together a ThunderFlame class in Orangeburg, SC on December 12th. It's an all day affair, and you can work out the details with Tom if you're interested. He can be reached at trh@charter.net. Tom's website is at http://www.thunderflame.com/ It's usually about $200.00 I believe for a kit and the instructions, and after you pass the course Tom will sell you the kits directly. You can't buy the kit if you haven't passed the class. (It is, after all, some rather volitile metals and solvents that you need some comfort level with to be safe.) I watched Ralph mix a half a kit in his shop area about a month ago and it was great!

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ROCC Activity Report

Hello and salutations to all those Rocket Jockie�s and Jockette�s who have dropped a line asking how the Orangeburg �Liberty Launch 2209� went. I should have gone around and gotten the names of everyone but I didn�t think of it so I can�t list all the attendees I saw, many I know by sight but not by name. I did recognize a lot of ROCC members and some who fly out at the Farm. I made planed arrangements to attend the whole 3 day event and though disappointed by the winds, had a good enough time to say that the trip was indeed worthwhile and enjoyed. If you want to see pictures of the event, �ROCKETS� magazine attended the 3 day event and took a lot of pictures. Besides those that will be included in the next issue of the magazine, you can go to the website. and select the Freedom Launch 2009 icon on the right, or the PHOTOS box on the left. Both will take you to a selection of shots from the launch and then you can select the �more photos for sale� on the magazines photo shop and look at 50 pages of 20 pictures per page. These are additional shots of attendees, rocket set ups, rockets in flight, and under chute that you can buy if you don�t have a good pro shot of your rocket in flight. Or sometimes in many, many tiny pieces. You can also go to the O�Burg club website and select the PHOTOS box on the top row and scroll down and select Freedom Launch 2009 and the 11 videos. You do need to see the video of the 400lb V-2 flight. Partial failure, partial success, fully impressive. The �M� engines looked to blow the exhaust nozzles just blowing out a blowtorch like flame while the single �O� engine labored to get the V-2 to a safe altitude for the chute recovery system to successfully return the V-2 safely with minor flame damage I understand. Other than the wind, the weather was great. It was probably the winds that kept the temperature and humidity within tolerable limits. But I was able to get in a few flights each day but kept everything at lower altitudes. The larger heavier flights were able to push through the winds and not drift all too far. The lighter weights had a lot more drift and wind cocking to cope with. Keep a look at the ROCC website for news about any chance of a spontaneous end of Oct launch and a more probable regular November launch. We expect the farm to be through with the crop harvest and weather providing, back to monthly launches by then. I hope David Tomkinson can come out, we are holding onto the Aerotech Barracuda that he won in the ROCC Raffle at the overnight campout launch. I believe a few of the ROCC members took part in a Scout launch last weekend out at that neat Scout Jamboree looking site. Hope it all went well and we might hear a short report about that on the web site soon. Any other activities you know of, get it onto the web site so anybody who is interested and available can take part in it. Till then, remember to keep those exhaust nozzles clear. Roy. ROCC Sec.

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A trip down memory lane...

I've been flying model rockets a long time now, and every now and then I'm reminded just how long. I ran across this PAGE with the original "Model Rocketry" magazine, starting with volume 1 number 1, from back in October of 1968. They're in .pdf format, so you'll need Foxit Reader or Adobe reader to open them. I remember having some of these as a kid.... man I wish I'd saved 'em! DR

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October Launch Prospects

I heard from Brad that it's highly unlikely we'll able to get into the field due to the length of the crop season this month, considering our scheduled launch is in 2 weeks. On the bright side, this month in O'burg it's a ROSCO launch, so standard NAR sport rules apply. It's a bit of a hike, but it's an option... Their launch schedule is HERE Doc R.

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How much ejection charge?

I recently had to try and answer that question on a new rocket. 5.5 inches in diameter and almost 36" of essentially empty space to fill with pressure at apogee. How much powder to put in? Well, I found this page and it gives a handy table as well as a good explanation of the math behind it... very handy!

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TARC sign-up is OPEN

Team America Rocketry Challenge 2010

 

Registration of 7th-12th grade student teams for the TARC 2010 national rocketry competition opened on September 2 and will remain open until November 30.  This competition, now entering its 8th year with the NAR and the Aerospace Industries Association as co-sponsors, has enrolled over 50,000 students over this period and got them excited about rocketry and about an aerosapce career -- which is why we do it.  The $60,000 in prizes for the top 10 teams and the free trip to the Paris or Farnborough European Air Show for the winning team help with the excitement, too!

 

This is the most effective youth outreach and national publicity program that the NAR has ever had.  Please help get the word out to students and teachers about this opportunity using our publicity handout, and reach out to help "mentor" these teams on basic rocket skills and welcome them to your launches to do their test and qualification flights.  See the event website www.rocketcontest.org for application forms, and see the NAR website's Team America page for more details. 

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Freedom Launch 2009

OK Folks... Freedom Launch is our next regularly scheduled event, over Labor Day weekend, Sept. 5th, 6th & 7th. Saturday & Sunday are standard sport rules, Monday is operating under Tripoli EX rules. I've been trying to find the updated EX rules on the Tripoli web site and haven't found them yet, so if someone knows them and can e-mail me i'll add them here. I know that there is a 450lb-plus V-2 that's about 12 feet tall to be launched around Noon on Monday, so if you needed a reason to just hang & watch for at least the morning... there you go! Roy sent out a great e-mail that i'll post on the "read more" link. So, in short, it's a really great time, I believe the waiver is around 12,000 ft., and they can easily handle up to an "M" motor. Ken will be there as a vendor, and he'll be loaded for bear, and I believe Chris Stockhart will also be there as a vendor. Some of you might might remember Chris from NSL last year. Here's a LINK to the SC ICBM site with more info. If you want to volunteer for range duties, 2 hour shift on either RSO or LCO, please drop a line to: William Daugherty at his address, wdaugherty2-at-sc.rr.com and let him know. (note... replace the "-at-" with the usual sign, didn't want the bots to scrape his name on our site) <UPDATE>If you still needed a reason to drive down to Orangeburg for the Freedom Launch, Burl Finkelstein sent me these two photos of what he will be launching Monday: Click on either for a (much) bigger version. </UPDATE> And now, please read Roy's e-mail below:

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A cautionary tale...

Just a brief note... the ATF released a report that was related to the fireworks explosion out on the outer banks earlier this year. The cause seems to have been the insertion of an igniter into a shell and a static discharge caused the igniter to fire, exploding the shell and all it's friends in the truck, killing 3 and seriously injuring an fourth. I bring this up because a bunch of us are going to be at a large launch in the next little bit and there is a really good reason why igniters should be shorted together until insertion at the pad with the rocket pointing safely up. Let's all be safe out there folks...

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4H at the Schiele

On Aug. 7th, 2009 Bob, Ralph and Doc helped a bunch of kids launch some tiny paper rockets. Pictures here

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