Flight Details:

Date June 3, 2001 (Chuck's BDay!)
Location: Ocotillo, CA
Rocket MFG & Model: RDS Norstar
Weight: 35lbs (dry)
Projected Altitude: 4500’
Motor: M1315
Deployment: Rocketman R14C w/ Deployment bag and pilot chute
Electronics: Redundant Adept altimeters

Well, there are good launches and bad. We finally had a bad one. This was to be the weekend Chuck was attempting his Level III Certification flight. Chuck had built a beefed-up RDS North Star for his Level III rocket figuring that it would cost less and is a proven design to build upon. As I arrived at Chuck’s home in San Diego late Friday, he was applying the final coat of paint. (No matter how much preparation you do, there are always things that need to be done the night before the launch (You’ll find this out when you do your certification flights!) Chuck walked me through the details of the rocket: deployment, motor, etc. Every thing looked rock-solid.  We didn’t need to rush out to Ocotillo in the morning because the rocket was scheduled to fly on Sunday morning. Therefore, we took our time to make sure everything was right.

We arrived out at Ocotillo mid morning on Saturday. Winds were about 15-20 with gust up to 40MPH. There are times when the wind dies out completely, however, it starts right back up again; frustrating. Someone send God an email, and tell him to cut-it-out! Saturday was so hot everyone just hung-out under their tents. Other than Andy Woerner’s 1/3 V2 rockets (see picture on right), Chuck had a hit with his misting system that he designed and built which we installed under our canopy! Using the standard misting system nozzles and some rubber hose, Chuck hooked the hose up to a bug sprayer, which would hold a charge for about ten minutes. This dropped down the temperature down from a million to 999,980 degrees!

As night approached, we anticipated the firing of a flare charge that I found out at Delamar dry lake. The kids kept finding these electrically-charged firing mechanisms that connected to the flair. Andy Woerner installed an igniter and launched it. Wow, it lit-up like a star for about three seconds. Cool. After exhausting all of the kids’ mortars, we went to bed. Man that wind. All night long we encountered 25-40MPH winds. The next day's launch seemed doomed. Then about 5:30 in the morning it broke. The wind dropped down to about 5MPH with gust up to 20MPH. (I’m so tired talking about winds at launches!)

Chuck and I started to prep his rocket: Install Lunch lugs, pack shoots, sand nose cone, arm electronics, and build motor. Ok, carry it out to the pad. Thanks to Andy Woerner’s pad we were ready to launch on the M1315. We had just received our Pretto Bros. Rocketry shirts and we had a large contingent of family there to watch the launch. 5-4-3-2-1- Lift-off. She flew great! Arched over and a POP -  white smoke! NO CHUTE…We witnessed the rocket come down with the nose cone ejected and NO CHUTE. After wiping the tears from our eyes we walked down range to do a post mortem. Although both 7gm charges fired, (Primary & Backup) it failed to deploy the chute. It is difficult to determine if the chute got stuck or we didn’t have enough charge!

The upside of this report: I was about 60 miles out side of Las Vegas (on my way home) when I heard from Chuck: “I have my next design ready!” Persistence is the key to success. Not only with rockets, but also in any thing you do.

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