Rocketry @ MindSay

Last Saturday we did our first rocket launch day in a few months.  It was darn hot, and I'll be launching earlier in the morning from now on.

Here's a report, in order of launch

Quest ??? - I don't recall the name of this rocket, but it's a simple OOP quest model that I got for 1/2 off at the Hobby Lobby a while back.  It's an 18mm mount streamer recovery rocket with plastic fins.  The first flight was with an A8 engine, and it was ok for just checking out the wind.  Since we were still waiting for some friends, I re-packed it and launched it with a B6-4, and that flew much better.

Estes MaxxTraxx - Jake's rocket, with 6 previous successful missions behind it.  I mistakenly loaded a B6 engine into it, so it didn't go as high as usual, but it was a flawless flight none the less

Quest Gamma Ray - I've had trouble with this rocket in the past.  The first flight snapped the recovery cord, resulting in damaged fins and a stripped 'chute.  And the short, narrow body tube makes packing this rocket a bit of a challenge.  But today, the 'Ray came into its own.  I put a C6-5 into it, and WOOSH!  I think it was my highest launch of any rocket ever.  And the little guy is so light that I though it would never come down.  In the end, it was a flawless recovery with no damage to any of the rocket's components.  I may have a new favorite high-flyer.

Estes Chrome Dome - This one is a "sports" version of the MaxxTraxx, and though it's in theory lighter, I don't think it flies much higher.  In the end, the 'Dome is not as much fun as the Traxx, though it gives perfectly reliable launches.  Meh.

Estes SkyWriter - My flying pencil, and previou high altitude champ.  The Skywriter streaked off the pad and reached for the clouds, just as expected.  Flawless launch and recovery.

Estes Blue Ninja - This was the maiden flight for this big D-engine monster.  I hadn't flown a D engine since I was a kid, and I had forgotten how cool those motors are.  The Ninja roared off the pad, leaving much more smoke than I was expecting.  It got quite high off the ground too, up in the MaxxTraxx range.  The big parachute returned it gently to the ground.  Wow, what an impressive flight.

I quickly re-packed the Ninja for another flawless flight.  It landed only 20 feet from the pad!  Then, I re-packed Jake's MaxxTraxx for the last flight of the day.  It went pretty far afield due to some crazy air currents, but it was also a great flight.

So, the Gamma Ray and Blue Ninja prove to be good performance rockets, and the Maxx Traxx and Skywriter maintain their positions as workhorse rockets.  Next launch I hope o have some of my other rockets ready to fly.

With the end of the quarter, here is my new "todo" hobby list:

Rockets:  In no particular order,

• Eggscalibre - Unassembled.  Estes Egg Lofter (maybe this one will work better than the Courier
• Full Moon  - needs painting
• Swift - needs painting
• Harpoon - Unassembled
• Bull Pup - needs painting
• A number of mildly damaged rockets that need repairs
• Probably other rockets I'm forgetting

 Miniatures: In no particular order, these are projects I'd like to do this year

• Spugs - 22 figures, 2/3 painted, need basing work
• Hydrissians - 12 figures, primed with a little work done already.
• Mephalians - 7 figures, primed
• "Scifi Guys" - 2 figures, good for scifi adventuring.
• "Scifi Trooper Gals" - 7 figures, need detail work
• Traveller Ships - 2 ships, primed
• Spartans - 24 men, primed and based, 1 figure painted
• Pirates - 30+ Scurvey Dogs, primed and based and ready to plunder!
• Space Marines - 12 or so, assembled. 
• Tyranids - Some warriors, Gene Stealers and Termagants, primed 
• Future Wars - 5 squads of 5 figures, from Men in Black to Typing Pool Girls with Guns and more.
• SWAT Team - 20 figures, primed.  I might do these earlier since they're uniformed and therefore easier.
• Andalusians - 48 foot, 20 mounted in various stages of paintedness
• Vikings - 100+ foot, mostly unpainted.
• The Fellowship of the Ring - primed and waiting for me to stop fearing them

I may need to add my 15mm Seven Years War figures to the list.  I already own them, but they've been "on hold" for many years due to lack of reason to paint them up.  I have quite a lot of 15mm stuff packed away to be honest.  I'm in a 28mm frame of mind these days, but it's probably time to dig out those old 15's to see if I have any projects I can knock out.

So with the New Year here, I probably ought to lay out some goals, or at least some hopes.

Rocketry:

I'd like to finish all of my model kits and get them into flyable condition.  I'm actually not to far from accomplishing this believe it or not.  Over half of my fleet is finished, and the rest are mostly assembled, just awaiting finishing.  (Filling, sanding, priming, painting, decals)  Once we get some warm, clear weekends in which I can work outside, I can probably finish them up.

As far as launching goes, I really want to get that egg lofter to successfully lift and return an egg!  I'll have to wait for a good "launch window" though - a nice day with very little breeze.  I feel like I have the payload-free flights pretty well under control now, but I've had no success launching heavy payloads like eggs yet.

Miniatures:

Christy had me pull out all of my 28mm figures and put them on the dining room table.  It was quite an amazing display!  There are so many projects there that I don't even know where to begin.  I think my best plan is to finish up units that are almost finished.  In order of probable priority:

1. Berber Spearmen - 16 figures who just need a few sashes and spears painted and shields mounted.  I've been working on these guys very infrequently since I moved to Katy, and it will be good to polish them off.
2. Spugs - 14 figures in need of a highlighing pass and some eye detail, along with some basing work.  They're very nearly done, and the basing work will be the hardest part.
3. Traveller Ships - I picked up a Scout/Courier and a Free Trader on Ebay.  These are at most an evening's work once I get them primed, and it will be a fun break from painting people (or aliens for that matter).
4. Spartans - 24 men, primed and based but nothing else.  The new 300 movie has me jazzed about them, and though there's no practical use right now, enthusiasm is 9/10 of motivation.
5. Hydrissians - 12 figures, primed and based with a little work done already.  They make more sense, and by God, I've certainly been sitting on that project for long enough.
6. "Scifi Trooper Gals" - Sort of a cross between Appleseed and Bubblegum Crisis, this squad of 6 armored ladies would take an evening to finish off, so I probably ought to just freakin' finish them.
7. Space Marines - I have a dozen or so Marines that would make fun opponents in 5150.  I can't decide between the classic "Ultramarine Blue" look, Black or a Storm-trooperesque White look.  I'm actually leaning towards White with unit colored shoulder pads, but we'll see.
8. Tyranids - Some warriors, Gene Stealers and Termagants, mostly bought on a lark and destined for use as xeno threats in 5150.  These are harder to paint that I thought they would be.
9. Future Wars - 5 squads of 5 figures, from Men in Black to Typing Pool Girls with Guns and more.  I should be able to pop a squad out in one or two nights, and they're perfect for little Chain Reaction games.  The only difficulty here is trying to pick clothing colors that look good (or tacky, as appropriate) since I have so little fashion sense.  Maybe Christy can help me out here.
10. The Fellowship of the Ring - 'nuff said, really.  I've been putting these guys off until I can develope better painting skills.

That's the end of the "quick and easy" projects.  After that, it's finishing my Andalusians, Vikings and Pirates, each of which is many dozens of figures worth of work.  In the farther future, I have the rest of my Hoplite army and some Republican Romans to look forward to.

The inescapeable conclusion is that I have enough figures to keep me busy painting for at least a year.  Many of my figures are well over a year old, and it's deplorable how little progress I've made this year painting stuff.  Hopefully by the time I finish my list above, I will have developed the habit of painting in the evenings again.

So, resolved: 2007 will be the year that I paint more than I buy.  Preferably MUCH more.

Though I do have to buy some more figures with my Christmas money to shore up some of my forces. :-)

Christmas has come and gone, and somehow I'm back at work on Boxing Day.  Oh well, maybe next year I won't need to spend my vacation time in surgery and recovery. :-/

Christy and I went pretty minimalist with each other, capping our spending at around $75us.  I got a new pocket knife to replace my old, lost one, the Zombie Survivial Guide (cuz you can never be too prepared) and two new rockets.

The first one is an extremely tiny rocket called The Swift, which is almost exactly like the old Estes Mosquito.  In other words, it's a tube just big enough to hold a 1/2A-T engine, a nose cone and some fins.  Word on "the street" is that you must paint this one flourescent orange and only fire it on a clear day or you'll never see it again.  It will be a fun "toy" to fire up, and I'm personally hoping to get to launch it more than once. :-)

The mroe serious rocket is the Estes Blue Ninja.  It will be my largest rocket, with a length equal to my Icarus, but a larger body tube.  This one flys on the larger 25mm diameter engines (I generally fly 18mm engines), and can be custom built to take the mighty E engine.  I think I'm going to stick with the C/D engines on this one though.  Like other rockets in its series, this one has a plastic fin/engine mount setup which I've found to work very well in the field.  Sure, it's not as "l33t" (or even as light) as the balsa/cardboard/spring clip rockets (I fly those too!), but it sure does build up in a big hurry, and makes a sturdy and reliable rocket.

I also got a BUNCH of engines (my standard B6-4's and C6-5's, along with some engines for the Swift and Ninja), so I should be good for launching well into the new year, especially considering that we only launch ever few months.

So, "yay for me". 

Saturday, Christy announced that it was a good day to launch some rockets.  As it turns out, I had 4 engines left and the same number of flyable rockets, so we headed out to our favorite launch site.

I decided to give my Courier "Egg Lofter" rocket another shot, and I scavenged some parachutes to replace the ones that it had ripped/melted through last time I launched it.  The Icarus (which is sort of a "sister rocket" in design) wasn't using its 'chutes, so I snagged those and loaded an egg into the capsule, along with plenty of paper towels packing material.

I also grabbed my trusty Maxx Traxx, the Chrome Dome and the now legendary Sky Writer, packed and loaded them up, and off we went.

Well, it was a little windier than I was comfortable with, but we decided to launch the Chrome Dome just to see if we could do any rocketry at all.  The Chrome dome is a solid rocket, but not very exciting so if something bad were to happen, it wouldn't be a big deal.  Luckily the flight went pretty well, and aside from the 'chute not quite opening all the way, everything went well.  I angled the launch rod into the wind to try to compensate for drift during recovery, and it worked reasonably well.

So next up was the Sky Writer.  Penelope had stepped on it earlier during launch pad setup, though oddly enough the body tube didn't seem too damaged.  We decided to fly it anyway, reasoning that if it wasn't flyable, then at least we'd get a spectacular failure.  Well, the good ol' writer went right up and came down for a perfect landing.  I had used my weakest engine in this one since it's a real climber, and it still went as high as any of the other launches.  The sky writer really is a fantastic rocket, and I highly recommend it to anyone as an easy to build, good looking and high flying bird.

By this time, Jake was convinced that it was safe to launch "his" Maxx Traxx.  The Traxx was a birthday gift to me from him, and he's very protective of it.  Fortuntely, it's one of my best rockets from a stability and reliability perspective, and since he picked it out, it makes him proud every time it flies.  This flight was pretty typical for a B engine launch - up nice and straight, perfect recovery.  The altimeter capsule actually appeared to work correctly this time, and we got a reading of around 290 feet, which is about what I had predicted it would be.  So #3 launch - successful.

Lastly, we set up the egg lofter.  Now I haven't had much luck launching rockets with heavy payloads.  I have the "sport" shots down to a science, but when you have a payload, you really have to get the rocket to arc up and eject at apogee, or you'll put undo stress on the parachute lines.  Did I mention that it was windy? :-)  So the courier goes up, weathervanes completely horizontal into the wind, and streaks towards the road.  I had used my most powerful engine to give it a fighting chance of lifting that egg, so it gained quite a lot of horiontal velocity before ejecting.  Miraculously, the booster and its 'chute had landed safely without even a body tube wrinkle.  That's one tough booster.  The capsule's parachute however, was blowing along the ground towards us as we approached the "landing" site.  It had ripped completely away from the capsule.  It took a minute or two to find the capsule, but it had finally skidded to a halt in a drainage ditch a few yards further down field.  The capsule is styrene plastic, so it's pretty tough.  The egg inside however did not fair so well. :-)  The capsule had actually buried itself about an inch down in some mud.  We all had a really good laugh. 

So I still haven't gotten a successful "loaded" flight out of the Courier.  It flies very well without an egg, and the rocket itself is quite resilient, but I haven't cracked the egg flying code yet.  My guess is that I'll need to wait for a nearly windless day, use a C6-3 instead of a C6-5, and aim straight up.

In the final tally, I need one new parachute to replace the egg capsule's stripped one, but otherwise the "fleet" is in perfect shape.  I suspect Christy will get me some new engines (and maybe even a new rocket) for Christmas, so here's hoping for some good flying in the new year!