TWA-Bong Rec Area

[KermieD]

This Saturday, Tripoli Wisconsin is sponsoring a HPR launch at Bong Recreational Area. They generally have a waiver of 8-10,000 feet, so there should be some big birds going up.

I was really starting to think that the cosmic tumblers were coming up 666 on me for my level 1 flight when the weather looked like thunderstorms. Then, the forecast clears up, and it suddenly struck me that it was a Tripoli launch and I'm NAR. I know the two are interchangable if you HAVE your certification, but didn't know if they'd let me cert at their launch. Fortunately, I managed to get a hold of the president of TWA and he said no problem. WHEW!!

I'm going to fix up a couple of rockets for my daughter to fly so she doesn't get bored silly, but the only stuff I have is my brand spankin' soon-to-be newly finished Yank 3" BBX and my Initiator. I have a couple of G38-7 econojets for the Initiator and maybe I can get some reloads from Tim at Al's Hobby at the launch.

Fear not, you picture junkies, I will be taking plenty of pictures. Unfortunately, my digital camera is only 640 x 480 and it doesn't have a zoom, so quality won't be great. Download size will be painless though for those of you bandwidth-challenged types.

I'll probably bring that film picture thingy too, but will have to wait to con a graphic artist at work to scan those, as I can't seem to find the power cord for my scanner.

In the meantime, here's a pic of the Initiator going up on the F40. It was windy and we ended up finding the thing behind the water tower you see way off in the background. I don't know if I posted this one before or not, and I apologize if I did.

 

[KermieD]

Well, it was my first organized launch and I had a blast!! There were about 150 fliers there from the Midwest, ranging from Iowa, WI, Illinois, and Michigan (didn't hear Indiana called out, but who knows?).

Yeah, I got my level 1!!! I hope some of the pics came out. I was so nervous that they're probably all just blurred. Went about as perfect as could be...straight as an arrow and deployment right at apogee, and I mean RIGHT at apogee. Even the LCO was saying "going up...turning ov...oh, now that was nice" as the chute came out. Nice thing about a drag deployment is how gently it appears. Just as the chute opened, though, a huge gust of wind appeared (I could have sworn i heard it whispering "philllllllllll") and I ended up with a pretty decent walk to get the thing. It managed to elude the evil rocket eaters, although I still think I saw their little fingers reaching up trying to get to it. The crowning touch was, when I did get to the rocket, the TransBeep was doing its job well, shrieking away. It was about 20 feet from a nearby road, and there were a half dozen bicyclists standing there, apparently afraid to get any closer than 20 feet. I did suffer some minor fin damage that will be easy to repair, and I'll probably add a layer of 6 oz glass on top of the 1.5 oz that I had on there.

I didn't know a lot of the names there and wasn't taking notes, so I don't have a lot of details. There was a great 3 way drag race of some PML BullPuppies on H123s. Took quite a while to find 'em all, but all 3 were recovered. I also got to see my first CATO and it was a spectacular one. It was a pretty big rocket, and it just burst into a fireball. No noise, just a huge fire. It was the flier's first dual-deployment effort, so that had to be a buzzwrecker. Another, VERY large rocket failed to deploy the drogue, and had main set at 500, and, at that speed, the main didn't actually deploy till far lower. You could hear the shroud lines snapping as they couldn't take the load. I don't mean to sound like it was a day filled with disaster. There were a ton of great flights with good deployment, both on the high power and the Estes pads. The guy who took me under his wing that day had a great flight on a PML Amraam 3 (sorry Carl, no scale paint job...it was a purdy purple thingy that he let his wife finish) with dual deployment, although his Radio Shack beeper didn't deploy correctly.

I'll get whatever pictures came out up there as soon as I can. Couldn't use the digital as we were too far away, so I gotta wait for the film to get developed.