RATS II AND FALL '95 CULPEPER LAUNCH REPORT

 
 
                            LAUNCH REPORT by Rich Koehler 
 

    I was fortunate enough to attend both RATS II and the Culpeper Fall
Invitational Meet in November.  Since I haven't seen anything else I'll
put in my two cents.

     First, the settings:  RATS is held in Southern New Jersey, on wide
open farmlands with the fields separated only by rarely traveled roads.
It has wonderful lines of sight and great neighbors. There are trees,
and they usually border salt marshes, but only in rare circumstances will
they present a problem. Due to the openness of the surrounding area it is
possible to move the rangehead to accommodate wind shifts so any problem
can be quickly nullified.  As long as you stay out of cultivated fields
(or between the rows) you have no problems from the surrounding farmers.
Personal Note: My buddy lost a rocket on an adjacent farm and the farmer
took him throughout his property ON HIS TRACTOR to look for it. They did
not find it but he made a new friend and got someone else interested in
rockets, probably a good deal for the price.

             Culpeper is held in Battlefield Park in Virginia.
This area is patchwork farmland with large trees bordering all of the
fields.  While the main Culpeper field is smaller than the RATS site, all
the fields put together are larger but are tree surrounded.  There are
however, two neighbors who deny us access to their property and rockets
which land there must be given up for dead.  One guy goes armed during
launches and is rumored to have threatened to shoot anyone who trespasses
on his land.  The entire area is surrounded by mountains and is real nice
to visit.  Civil War buffs will want to have extra days for sightseeing as
the whole area is historically significant, particularly for that era.

       RATS II was held on November 4th and 5th.  Saturday dawned cold and
very windy.  We had 3 model rocket pads, 16 medium and high power, and 4
"away cells" for big projects.  Due to the high winds only 51 flights were
attempted on Saturday, (we didn't start until almost 10:00), almost half
from the model pads.  Most rockets were recovered, but one did manage to
land on the power lines, (something I find surprising, with 1900 acres what
are the odds of landing on a 1/2" power line).  There were too many ejection
failures, not separations or strips, these simply failed to eject. I was busy
being a pad manager both days and I never got to find out if it was a matter
of forgetting to load ejection charges in reloadables, or some other failure.
There were two vendors on hand, Pratt Hobbies and Zeppelin Hobbies. Both had
a field day as conditions limited folks to spending a lot of time (and of
course $) at their displays.  Lou from Zeppelin brought a packed Ryder truck
down and sold most of it by Sunday afternoon.  He had it set up like a small
store.  You walked up a ramp into the truck, on both sides he had tables,
above the tables were racks, everything neat and organized, very well done,
and a lure most folks found hard to resist.  Neal Davis brought some expensive
video equipment with him and shot lots of tape over the two days. These tapes
may be available but I don't yet know when or how.

        Saturday night saw wind chills drop down to around 20 degrees and
on the way to the field Sunday we saw frozen puddles.  The launch rod grease
had achieved the consistency and stickiness of tar and I spent a lot of time
getting them cleaned so we could fly.  The wind was much calmer and it was
warmer later in the day.  Between 9:00 and 4:00 when I left, we had already
sent 224 rockets aloft. Again recovery problems seemed rather high, again it
appeared to be failures of the charges rather than separations.  There were
some hybrids flown, all Hypertek, all great flights but plagued by recovery
problems and I think only 1 survived.  If you've never seen one, they burn
with a red flame and are smokeless. (I wish I could afford this system).
There were big rockets too, Jim Livingston had one (full scale ARRAM(?))
which I was privileged to help set up as well as Damian Russo's Max-Q on a
full "M". This homemade beauty hit 16,288 feet, but due to altimeter ejection,
(drogue at apogee, main at 250), landed only about 300 yards from the pad.
Many folks certified over the weekend, a lot of model rockets were launched,
a lot of medium and high power and all seemed to have a good time.  There were
two contests for altimeter equipped rockets, closest to 5,000', and closest to
7,500 feet.  I believe that the one for 5,000 hit 5,002 or something like that
(check that altimeter, see if it's stock :-), the other also within 100 feet
of the targeted altitude, nice shooting folks.  (Editor's note:  The 5000 foot 
contest was won by Scott Ghiz with an altitude of 5005 feet.  The 7500 foot
contest was won by Fritz Katz of the LIARS with an altitude of 7287 feet.)

         Culpeper was much colder than RATS, but due to a recent order from
Cabela's I was much more comfortable than I had been at RATS. We had eight
pads for medium and high power, 3 or 4 for model rockets.  There were some
Boy Scouts with their own pads set up to one side.  They launched pretty much
at will but didn't seem to interfere with the main launch and appeared to be
having loads of fun.  CNN was there on Saturday for about three hours and did
interviews and filmed flights.  The wind was blowing from our field across the
street, most rockets coming perilously close to the wacko's property (the one
who hunts rocketeers), but none as far as I know onto his land.  He did not
seem to be around on Saturday anyway.  A lot of rockets went up. They seemed
to be a little more efficient at reloading the racks than we are at RATS but
I understand that they have hundreds of fliers in the Spring and are more
experienced in that area. It was cloudy Saturday, ceiling was low and rain
squalls blew through once or twice.   Pratt Hobbies was there as well as Lou
from Zeppelin with yet another Ryder truck.  There were three or four others
including Rob Edmunds.  Rob was showing his two newest creations a Deltie
Thunder (essentially a giant Deltie, and it was cool!), and the Arcie.  Both
flew well even with the high winds.  There were no food vendors and that was
a pain as folks who couldn't hold out would leave for an hour or so and then
return. Preparing to move I had packed all my rocket stuff so I was a limited
to being spectator both days but my nephew and I spent the time helping others
recover their rockets.  As at RATS there seemed to be a high number of wrecks
when ejection charges didn't fire, perhaps weather related, but I don't know.

          Also as at RATS Sunday was calmer and warmer, the wind much more
favorable and most rockets landed "in-field", although anything higher than
3,000' seemed to go two or three fields down unless altimeter equipped.  The
wacko was present, he was shooting up his property all day, we could hear
him constantly up until we left at 1:00.  Sounded to me like 12 gauge and
.22 rifle fire, he burned as much powder as we did AP and I could hear his
ricochets whining every so often.  (Folks, I've done and will do a lot of
shooting and this guy is damned careless, bear this in mind when down there).
Here too were some big rockets and Doug Pratt flew a Aerotech Hybrid which
flew fine although I think that the main chute tangled, it landed okay, at
least I didn't see any major damage. The Aerotech system seems much simpler
than the Hypertek but not having worked with either I'm not qualified to
judge.  Damian Russo, his WAC team and Larry Z made the trip down from NJ
also.  In fact I think we (NJ TRA) and the LIARS made up a fair percentage
of the participants.  Ted Apke (whom I traveled with) flew his homemade
two-stager, "Post Graduator", based on LOC Components equipped with both
an Adept Altimeter and Stager. It was his first two-stager and performed
flawlessly but due to a wind related motor selection only hit 2800 feet.
With a long trip home ahead of us and being really hungry we left at 1:00
so I don't know how the rest of the day went.  All in all, making it to two
events a week apart was a lot of fun.  Hope to make both, both times next
year.

Question: Has anyone tried to talk to the landowners who deny us access at
the Culpeper launches?  Maybe we can trade them something to gain us their 
cooperation, some free labor for a day on their farms or a letter telling
them who we are, and what we're about. For the wacko, a case of C4, or a
Stinger missile system, (who knows maybe a case or two of beer would do).


Rich Koehler 
NAR: 62059   
TRA: 3730