May 12 and 13th 2001
Sponsored by Tripoli Vegas
Attendance: approx. 150
Waiver:100,000ft

I’ve never been to Delamar, however, I knew its approximate location. I knew it was somewhere close to the mystical area 51. One of my coworker’s parents lives in Alamo, which is the closest town to the Delamar Dry Lake. The Delamar Dry Lake is about 100 miles North East of Vegas, and I seemed to make it there in about and hour and a half both days. The thing that slows you down is the 14 miles of dirt road off of the highway. My first excursion through the Delamar desert was a surprise as I crested a hill and saw the dry lake! It looked like a pearl in the middle of the desert! Cool, I said out loud and woke my son and his friend.

Just like Springfest 2001, we encountered a dichotomy of good and bad weather. After talking with Les Derkovitz, he informed us that this is par for the course; one good day of weather and one bad. I didn't arrive until late morning on Saturday, and missed a few dozen launches, however, the main event rockets were still being staged for flight. The contenders were:

Gates Brothers Athos II on a central Kosdon M and six outboard M1315s!
Gates Brothers D'Artangan on Four K250's 
Shadow Composite's/ Cosdon P project.
Vince Catalano's Most Flown M Rocket on a NASSA M2000
Les Derkovitz's NASSA M2000
Jerry McKinley's NASSA L1300?

The wind seemed to increase in the afternoon hours, and most of us tried to wait out the wind - the wind won. We all decided that the early morning hours of Sunday would be more ideal launch conditions. I decided not to camp out this time, and I was told that the crew had some experimental fireworks thank to David Pacheco. I'm sorry I missed it until I heard everyone complain about the 50 mile an hour winds and hurricane like rain storm. I heard several complaints about pools of rain finding its way into tents. 

I wanted to make it back to Vegas to see the Trinidad vs. Joppy fight. Great fight and Trinidad was victorious. He is the middleweight champion and undefeated.

I decided to make an early trip from Las Vegas on Sunday to arrive out at Delamar early enough to see all of the flights. I arrived at exactly 7:00am and saw the Shadow composite rocket being loaded onto the pad. It was cool with 15MPH winds. Not too bad. The launch was a go. 5-4-3-2-1…. Clears the pad, lifting, lifting, and…shred…..the sky seemed to rain carbon fiber for a few minutes. Several hours after the flight, my son found several pieces of the rocket. No clues by the pieces we found. I didn't talk with the team after the flight and do not know the cause of the failure. There's always another day to fly!
Just before the Shadow Composite rocket lift-off, I assisted the Gates Brothers in lifting Athos II on their new BlackSky ProPad 3c rail. This was the nicest pad I have ever seen. The pad is motor controlled and extremely stout. Link here for the review of this cool piece of hardware: http://www.rocketryonline.com/Search/db_search.cgi?setup_file=News&submit_search=yes&db_id=583

The Gates Brothers decided to upsize Athos with Athos II. Link here for the full details:
http://www.gbrocketry.com/athos_ii.htm

The Gates Brothers were using a Missileworks Digifire controller to launch Athos II, and wisely tried it out on Saturday prior to Sunday's launch. They discovered that the antenna need to protrude from the transmitter casing, and the receiver needed to be raised from the dry lakebed. The launch controller was handed to the RCO and Dirk and Eric both had cameras during the liftoff: 5-4-3-2-1: Off it went. I believe they stage in pairs. The flight looked picture perfect and was the prettiest flight of the weekend. We saw deployment and started chasing Athos II down range in Dirks SUV. Eric started to chase it on my ATV holding their Canon XL-1 and nearly crashed when he encountered a trench with water in it. We found Athos II about a mile and a half down range on the side of a hill. It appeared in tact until we looked at the booster section. Gates experimented with new, Blacksky, forward igniters. There was an obvious "blow-by" of the forward enclosure which caused them to fire through the booster burning three of the six outboard boosters. Darn. The rest of Athos II was in tact and it still can fly with the original booster section. Nice flight guys.

As we were recovering Athos II downrange, Les Derkovitz launched his scratch built, fiberglass rocket on a NASSA M2000. This was a picture perfect flight and recovery. In fact, we saw it come down farther down range from where Gates's Athos II landed. Two other flights that NASSA had on Sunday were Jerry McKinley's L1300 and Vince Catalano's Yellow M Rocket on a NASSA M2000. Both of these flights were perfect and reached the 15,000-foot level. Vince tried to beat the "I" Altitude record on a small rocket, however, it wind cocked off the rail and was never recovered. The NASSA boys sure are looking stronger and stronger! They're currently constructing an all aluminum rocket called GPQ. Which will fly on a NASSA "Q" at Balls 2001. You can read about NASSA here: http://www.rimworld.com/nassa/.

The Gates Brothers quickly prepared D'Artangan for flight after Athos II before the wind velocity increased. D'Artangan flew on four K250s. Two at launch and two air started. 5-4-3-2-1: Lift off. The first two K's ignited and it went, and went, and went. They burned out and it coasted for about a second and the other two K's lit. Off D'Artangan went. "No worry, we have a Walston tracking unit for it." There was a report of ejection, however, I can't recall seeing anything. D'Artangan flew North-East of the flight line. The Gates spent about four hours looking for D'Artangan and never found it. There was another team that launched an "L" based rocket that flew in the same general area who were also looking for their lost rocket that stayed behind to search. Maybe they found one or both! Hope so, D'Artangan had a beautiful gradient metallic paint job. If you are a military pilot that flies out of Nellis, please email me its location so we can recover our rockets.

Gordon McDaniel flew several rockets. One on a NASSA motor, Addiction, which flew great, however it didn't seem to hold-up to the power of the NASSA motor. At least Gordon flew; I ended up not flying anything.

One interesting rocket was an ammonium nitrate based rocket. 5-4-3-2-1: burn, burn, burn, a slow burn rocket that didn't have enough power to lift off but I think it won closest to the pad :)

Moreover, Delmar was a nice launch sans the bad weather. I believe everyone had a good time and it was nice to discover the adjacent dry lakes to my hometown of Las Vegas. I look forward to attending next year.