October Sky Launch Tripoli Central California 2003
This was a very enjoyable launch for me. I traveled with the VideoRocketry.com crew of Jamie and Peter Clay, in Jamie’s motor home that goes by the name of Matilda. I brought & flew four rockets: Mach Mimi, Old Glory, JC Alpha III, and an unnamed Aerocon Flipi-Twin. Below is a short description of my experiences and a few picture links. To see the some of Jamie & Peter’s pictures go here or Just go browse VideoRocketry.com.
Mach Mimi flew her 4^th flight, the 2^nd on an I-357. Her first two flights were on I-300s. And as usual, she left in a blue flash followed by her very intentional and most unusual screaming howl. Getting a good launch photo is quite difficult, but this is where it pays to travel with the VideoRocketry.com crew. Jamie captured the launch on video, slowed it down 16 times to produce this short clip. If this is too fast, try this sequence of still frames. I’ll be writing an article on this rocket soon, you’ll be able to find that article here when it is ready.
Old Glory is an Aerotech Mirage modified to use a PML Copilot for dual deployment, and an H180 motor. The H180 is needed to get off the pad with the added weight of the weighted nose cone and the special payload. Old Glory was to be retired after her flight at XPRS in September due to signs of stress to the insufficient airframe, but one of the parachutes did not fully deploy, so the decent rate was too fast for a proper display. So I decided she needed to do it one more time before being converted to a display piece.
JC Alpha III is an upscale of the Estes Alpha that was built by John Coker to fly on 38mm motors up to a 38/600. He wrapped the airframe in with a layer of carbon fiber, and through-wall mounted the G10 fins. John lost interest in the rocket (probably just got interested in bigger things), and recently gave it to me. I outfitted it with motor retention, and an R-DAS, then finished the rocket with a scale Estes Alpha III orange & black paint job. In contrast to Old Glory, this was the maiden flight for this cute little bird. I broke her in gently on a long burning H45 for a nice slow launch that went about 4300’.
My Flipi-Twin is an interesting two-stage kit by Bob Fortune at Aerocon. This was its maiden flight and Jamie outfitted it with one of his small rocket video cameras. The onboard footage is pretty good up to the point of staging, but since the sustainer took an erratic course, the downlink antenna alignment suffered, as did the video after staging. You can view it on his site at this link.
Jamie and Peter got a bit surly with me playing with my video camera’s inferred setting (all in good fun of course). During the day Jamie did his thing, prepping & documenting Gumby’s private video rocket.