2003 Rocket Stats

I do a summary of our family's rocket activities every year*, and this year y'all have the chance to look it over if you'd like. *yawn* It's in the extended entry.

*We've kept complete records of every flight we've ever made. It's a good way to gauge our progress as we advance in this hobby, and helps us to figure out what happened when things go wrong.

This year has been very satisfying because of the various group projects we were involved in. On the individual level, we only launched about half as many flights as we normally make in a year, but the move into new technologies made for some exciting times and we’re eagerly looking forward to 2004 and beyond.

Without a doubt, the high point of our year was the Team America Rocket Challenge. I mentored a group of students from T.C. Williams high school in Alexandria, Virginia, and although they didn't make the finals, they made a qualified flight that ranked 110th out of almost 900 teams. Not bad for kids who had never flown a rocket before.

Mookie and I also volunteered to help out at the finals held in Northern Virginia. One hundred and one teams from all over the country participated on one cold, miserable, rainy day. It was still a spectacular event, and we had the chance to meet NASA shuttle astronauts, the Director of NASA, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and author Homer Hickam of 'October Sky' and 'Rocket Boys' fame. As neat as that was, the best part of the day was watching the student teams make their flights.

We also participated in the Alpha 40 Project, making the official flights for Virginia. In a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Estes Alpha design, two pairs of Alpha's are being flown - one pair in each US state and Canadian province, and the other pair in Europe and Asia and Australia. Once the flights are completed, one of each pair has been promised to the Smithsonian Air & Space museum and the other pair will be donated to the Vern Estes model rocket museum.

During the summer, Mookie and I also volunteered to do a talk and demonstration launch for a middle school program called TEMS.

Firsts:
Liz and I assembled our first homemade parachute using ripstop nylon. It worked great, but was fairly labor-intensive and probably not worth the cost savings. I’m planning to try my hand at sewing my own quarter-spherical chute using the rest of the ripstop nylon, if I ever get around to it.

This year we also made the move into hybrid motors. Unlike the traditional black powder or amonium perchlorate motors, the hybrids use plastic fuel grains and nitrous oxide. Very cool, and (so far) completely unregulated by Uncle Sam.

Using hybrid motors means using electronics for parachute deployment. We've now made several flights with the G-Wiz altimeter, which uses both an accelerometer and a barometric sensor to determine the peak altitude of the flight and to deploy the parachute at a specified time.

Stats:
9 launches attended.

42 rocket flights made, in 28 different rockets.
3 clusters flown (multiple motors at liftoff).
2 staged flights (more than 1 motor, ignited one after another)
4 rocket glider flights
1 helicopter recovery flight
4 UFO/saucer flights

34 black powder motors (Estes)
12 amonium perchlorate motors (Aerotech)
2 hybrid motor flights (RATT-works)

smallest motor flown: 1/4A
biggest motor flown: H (an I motor was attempted, but unsuccessful)
most often flown: C

Miscellanies:

2003
Most flown rocket:
Snitch – 4 flights (31 flights total) – UFO/saucer model.
Next most flown:
Bootlegger – 3 flights (12 flights total, all on G motors).
Pacifyer – 3 flights (4 total, all on D motors)
Barenaked Lady – 3 flights (6 flights total, on D/E motors)

Rockets destroyed: 1 – top stage of a scale Soviet SA-2 Guideline SAM, tilted off rod, slammed into ground under power (2nd flight).
Rockets retired: 1 – Cinderella II, marginally stable, retired for safety reasons (3rd flight).
Rockets lost: 1 – Higher Calling. Extreme altitude bird (4th flight).

Notable damage:
FY2K, nosecone separation at altitude. Rocket recovered under chute, nosecone recovered undamaged (7th flight).
Bootlegger, chute didn’t deploy. Hit the ground hard – crunch – repaired (12th flight)
Bad Medicine, shock cord pulled through airframe. Body recovered undamaged, nosecone recovered under chute (3rd flight).

All
Most flown rockets:
Snitch – 31 flights – Estes ready-to-fly UFO/saucer
Vampyre – 27 flights (1 in 2003, this rocket has also flown at least once each year since 1997) – scratchbuilt, my design
Venom – 23 flights – Estes kit
YJ-218 – 20 flights (2 in 2003, this rocket has flown at least once each year since 1998) – twin-engine cluster, scratchbuilt

Posted by Ted at January 11, 2004 02:08 AM
Category: Rocketry