Distant Thunder 2021
November 16, 2021
For the last launch of the year, it was a great sendoff to 2021! I had one of my best flights, and it was a beautiful weekend in Argonia.
Earlier this year, I began making tentative plans to fly a high-performing 2 stage in 2022, so to get back in the swing of staging, I bought a couple motors to fly my current multistage again. Mach Wave II Stage last flew at LDRS 38 in 2019, so I was excited for another chance to get it in the air. I bought a K1100T for the booster, and a J500G for the sustainer, both of which would be the hardest-hitting motors flown for this stack. I had other flights for other rockets planned throughout the spring and summer, so hopefully one of the fall launches would provide favorable weather. October was too windy, but Distant Thunder this November seemed to look good.
As this past week went by, the weather continued to cooperate, so I went for it. I had far more launch prep to do than I anticipated, especially since both stages crash-landed under drogue last flight but I hadn’t done any repairs in the 2 years since. Nevertheless with a 3D-printed booster sled and my own electronics throughout, it came together fairly well. It was only Friday evening, the night before the launch, that I ran into some snags. The TeleMega in the sustainer had odd startup behavior, and so while it seemed to the be screw switch, I wasn’t in a position to be able to replace that. I flipped the switches between the TeleMega and EasyMini, and that seemed to improve the variable startup behavior. By the time I made the ejection charges and buttoned both stages up, it was after dinnertime Friday evening, so camping was no longer on the table. I took the extra time to assemble the motors, attach rivets and shear pins, make up the igniters, and pack the car such that when I arrived the next morning, all I needed to do was take it to RSO.
This worked out pretty well, and I didn’t have any other issues the day of! It worked out that I didn’t camp out because it was brutally cold, and I only needed a few minutes of prep anyway. I went out to the pad at 9:00, along with a few other fliers. Due to complications with the other fliers at the away pads, mine sat on the pad for over an hour and a half while the other rockets failed in-flight, wouldn’t boot up, or one individual forgot to turn on the electronics on his high-altitude attempt altogether. Fortunately, mine went off without a hitch! The K1100T is now one of my favorite motors, and the J500G lit 5 seconds after launch, boosting up to just shy of 12,000ft, pulling 31Gs, and reached Mach 1.1 on the way up. Both stages recovered under main and were super easy to locate just off the roads! I really couldn’t have asked for a better flight.
Sam and Kenzie had arrived for the day as well, so they watched and helped me with recovery afterwards. I was elated the rest of the day and as things warmed up, I cleaned hardware the rocket insides, got data off the altimeters, and did all the post-flight cleanup. OSU was in attendance with some L2 cert flights, another M2500T on “Go Pokes” our tried and true kit that’s flown almost a dozen times and I helped build in 2019, but unfortuately a 20ft-tall 2 stage of theirs suffered a CATO of the O5280X in the booster a couple seconds into flight. It’s always great to see them out here, and I hope that will continue to be the case for years to come.
Sam and I got Taco Bell in Wellington before she and Kenzie went on to Wichita, and I returned to the rocket pasture to camp out. On the way, I was treated to a gorgeous sunset (see title image). It was too chilly to do much else that evening, so I turned in for the night at 20:30.
Sunday I flew Easy on the Wallet Too as the final test flight of the Eggtimer electronics I soldered back in January. The Quantum did great on its 3rd flight, but a knot came undone and the aft section of the rocket separated and fell disconnected. I saw both portions land, but after almost 4 hours of searching, I was unable to the find the aft section. I decided to throw in the towel when the milo stalks started looking like my missing black and yellow rocket section.
It was a bummer to end the year with a missing rocket piece, but the excitement from the previous day was still too great to be very upset. I packed up my gear and helped the Kloudbusters tear down the range. I’m really pleased with everything I got to fly this year! I’ll make another year-in-review post next month. Now I get to turn my attention to something new: my 5″ Blue Iguana kit arrived in the mail on Friday, so now I finally have a kit to fly this M1419W I’ve had since 2018!