Launch Report: March 26, 1998
The day was a perfect day to fly model rockets (or
"raunch
lockets" as someone accidentally said). There was little or no
wind
and we had a special bonus: a friend, Brett, to come along and launch
with
us.
We had four rockets to launch: Hijax, Gnome,
Mongoose,
and Wizard.
First up: my all-time favorite, Hijax. I had
a fun cargo, some Star Wars Micro Machine People.
The fiery inferno of launch was spectacular.
I could see the flame spitting out of the nozzle at lift-off.
After
that I could see the black tracking smoke spewing out of the
nozzle.
Last of all, I saw some unidentified white smoke right before ejection.
Ejection went well. A little
too well,
in fact. Hijax's old problem of separating shock cord mounts was
back. The booster stage tumbled down to a hard, but no damage,
landing.
The cargo stage floated gracefully down to a soft landing on someone's
front porch. It landed on the other side of the creek, so I had
trouble
getting to it.
The rockets Mongoose and Wizard were swiftly and
painlessly eliminated from the running. We had only Gnome
left.
The Gnome launch was great, too. The rocket
zipped off the pad at high speed and flew into the low cloud cover
looming
above. We can enjoy this experience for years to come, because we
got footage of the launch with our 8-mm Canon video camera. For
years,
I've wanted to get this footage up online, and now, finally, we are
able
to do so (look at the bottom of the page). I finally managed to edit
together the launch footage (in December 2003), and it's now here
online, for all to behold. It's the first video I've produced on my own
computer. I also have some lower-quality videos, which are vaguely
interesting (but not terribly so).
The rocket zipped out of the cloud cover and started
coming down really fast. Some lady was walking near where the
rocket
looked like it was going to land. I started yelling to her that a
rocket was coming down near her, but she must've been deaf, or
something,
because she didn't hear me. Luckily, the rocket didn't hit
her.
The rocket landed with no damage, and was put back on display on my
desk.
No lost rockets, just great fun!
Footage!
The official edited footage of this
launch, now seen for the first time ever on wilhelm-aerospace.org.
Miscellaneous Shots
movie: Hijax refuses
to
fly.
movie: Hijax
remains stubborn as ever, and refuses to fly. (We never got the
actual
launch on tape).
movie: Gnome takes to the
skies. Ted filmed this (and the rest of the footage we shot that
day), and what he thought was the rocket that he was tracking was
actually
a piece of dust on the lens.
movie: Gnome has landed
on the opposite side of the creek, and I have to wade through the creek
to get there. "The water can't be too deep," I say. Later,
I add, "There can just be too much water." That quote is best
forgotten.
www.wilhelm-aerospace.org
copyright 1998, 2002, 2003 by Willy Logan