Bob Space

Short form: A calm clear morning, perfect for flying model rockets except for the slight chill. In the space of a touch over 3 hours, over fifteen flights were made, with only two classifiable as “not successful.” Best still, every single flight was a learning experience. My four flights all went decently well … my fifth flight didn’t happen for lack of a suitable motor in the inventory. I still caught the two hardest targets for the day: 60+ seconds parachute duration flight, and 30+ seconds streamer duration flight. That knocks down my second and third goals for the NARTREK Bronze training level; fourth goal must wait until I finish my homebuilt booster stage.

Bonus content: Sunday night I heard from the owners of the dry lake I’ve been wanting to fly on. They’re very amenable, with just one hoop to clear. I can see several possible ways to clear that hoop — we just have to figure out which one is best. But our next flight day should be there, if all goes well.
Long form:

I made a late start and forgot the just-in-case water sprayers. Alas. As it was, I now know that if I take the full panoply of material out with me, I must sacrifice at least one passenger space in the Honda. I’m thinking I ought to invest in a “light and fast” alternative flight regime.

I got to the launch site (39d 40m 17s N, 119d 48m 30s W — go look!) about 20 minutes before sunrise. First mission: pace off the north perimeter and place orange cones along the road edge. Then it was time to start unloading and setting up. I put the two pads up first, and laid out the launch controller and power pack. I unpacked my rockets and put that carrier back in the car. I set up the camera and tripod and took a few pictures of the surroundings in the earliest morning light. Then I braved the privy shelter, which popped up very very easily, and the collapsible camp toilet, also a snap. Alas, I didn’t follow through with the privy shelter as I ought — I really need to learn how to stake things down properly.

The first club member and his dad arrived as I was finishing that up. Good timing — they had the folding table and the fire-suppression shovel. As I finished unloading equipment onto the table, the rest of the club arrived. (My daughter, alas, stayed home with a cold.) All of us had the Quest Astras we’d built as our first club project — the youth club leader also brought a veritable fleet of other rockets in all sizes and shapes.

Our nemesis for most of the morning was the chill air — parachutes just wouldn’t open the way they ought. A full half of our flights on the day ended with what I’ll call a “streamering” parachute … parachute out and providing drag, but not as much as normal. In most cases this was still good enough to bring the model down at a safe speed. This was a source of much frustrated amusement.

The club Astras all held up nicely through repeated flights with a first flight on A6-4, a pair of parachute-testing flights on B6-4, and the parachute duration club challenge on C6-5. During the parachute challenge, one Astra’s chute tangled, setting a pretty low mark … and I have to wonder now if that was a C motor in there. The other Astra (flown by the youth club leader) flew high enough to get clear of our windbreak and catch gusts from the south which carried it over a quarter-mile downrange. That pretty much wrapped up the day, but we managed to keep a pretty good eye on it and it was recovered, undamaged.

My first Astra flight went on A6-4 and had chute issues. My second Astra flight, and first attempt on the time trial, waited while the chute warmed itself in the sun. I got a good takeoff, but it looked like I weathercocked south and didn’t quite get the altitude I wanted. The chute deployed with a perfect snap, though … it came down on the scrubby slope at the south side of the range with a flight time of 58.5 seconds … blast! Just short of the mark. (And also we’ve learned my celphone stopwatch makes a poor tool given bright outdoor sunlight completely wipes out the display.)

I worked off the frustration by putting the Pip Squeak up for its time trial (on a streamer recovery). Cute little rocket. Wish I’d done more to decorate it. Nice launch, good climb, drifted a bit north … and a bit more … and then the streamer brought it down about 300 feet away, on the “wrong” side of the road and into the private property beyond. Oops. Happily we had skinny-ish youth on hand to slide through the barbed wire and recover my little rocket. The time? Oh, right, the time. 31.5 seconds, just enough to beat my target of 30.0.

In and around all these frustrated Astras with stubborn parachutes, the youth club leader was flying his more novel rockets. An Estes Blue Ninja got my last D12-3 motor — which I’d come to regret, since I couldn’t fly the rebuild Liquidator. But the Ninja had a good flight, even with a stiff ‘chute.

Then he rolled out his Estes Cosmic Cobra … which apparently never had its shock cord or chute installed in the body stage. We’ll have to talk about that — it came down well away, but those plastic fins can do a body harm. The helicopter-recovered nose performed perfectly, though. Very showy rocket, and I must have him bring it when we do demonstration launches.

His Quest Terrier-Orion was an impressively long, sleek rocket, but the ejection charge failed to expel the nose cone. Interestingly, it half-glided back, but not slowly enough. One lower fin detached on ground impact. That rocket was retired for the day.

Next to the prep table: An Estes Fat Boy. He stuck a B6-4 in it, launched from the Estes pad … and it never got up any decent speed, tipped over right off the road, and lawndarted itself about 60 feet west of the pad. First problem: underpowered motor. Second problem: nose cone was very sticky. Third problem: 3/16″ launch lug on a 1/8″ rail. Reloading with a C6-5 and plenty of wadding, he flew it from the Mantis pad with a picture-perfect vertical climb, and a chute deploy just a little past the peak. C6-3 would probably have been an ideal motor, but we had none on hand. (Google tells me B6-4 was a wrong motor, too.) This is another showy rocket that’s easy to see where-ever it is.

Towards the end he prepped up a Quest Courier … complete with a raw egg for the nose capsule. He mother was fully convinced this was going to end in a mess. A few sheets of toilet paper in the unoccupied volume of the capsule, tape the capsule shut, load a C6-5 (egglofters are heavy) … and this rocket again had a near perfect vertical climb and parachute deploy after peak. (Again, C6-3 would have been ideal.) Both chutes worked well. And the egg … was perfectly unharmed. Not a crack. Everyone was delighted.

About this time I was brave enough to tackle my Astra again, going for time. This time it got good vertical, and a little bit of north drift … the chute didn’t snap and didn’t look right. I found when I got it back that one of the shroud lines had unknotted from the chute. Still, it held enough air to give me a flight time of 69.9 seconds. Another NARTREK checkbox finished.

So what else did we learn? We learned that if the engine fits loosely in the motor tube, then ejection gases are going to blow back and you’ll probably not get your recovery system deployed. And we learned how to fix that before even getting to the pad, with a wrap or two of masking tape.

We learned that however much we dislike the Estes launch controller, it has a design advantage in automatically opening the “key” when it’s released. We left the key in the GO Box quite a few times. I’m going to have to consider that feature when I get to building or refurbishing a multi-launcher.

I learned I’m probably going to have to invest in a storage locker near the launch site to reduce my stress.

And we really learned that parachutes should not be stored inside the rocket body tube. They should be left outside to breathe and to learn to be happier with being open than with being closed.

We used up my supply of Quest Q2 igniters. I still have plenty of Estes igniters, of course, and a supply of the new Q2-G2s which are apparently much more reliable but which are also so sensitive that they fire on the Estes key-check current. We’ll see how they play next time around.

What was missing from the range box (this time)? Needle-nose pliers for stubborn motor extractions. Maybe some clay or putty to hold igniters in place instead of the plastic plug buttons. Sandpaper.

Gee, I’ve been kind of quiet lately, huh? Rest assured, I’m still alive. Among other matters:

I am hard at work (or at least working) on the EZFudge Final Frontier (Star Trek) supplement. I think I’ve got all the basic stuff nailed down, but I really, REALLY need to work out a way to playtest it, preferably with people who like (original) Trek and don’t necessarily know Fudge. I’m thinking of trying this over Skype. If you’d be interested in making a character and running through two or three sequences, drop me a line through my gmail address (nvdaydreamer). (What do I do for dice service? Hmm. I like http://www.metstuebchen.de/cgi-bin/DIESERVER/roll.pl?)

I ordered my Galileoscope today and I’m really excited about it. (I’m also really excited that I saved all the eyepieces and accessories from our last refractor scope, ’cause they’ll be usable in the Galileoscope.) Check out http://www.galileoscope.org for all the best news.

Looking forward to Discovery’s landing on Saturday. Few things make me smile as much as the twin sonic booms as the orbiter comes home. (And I still remember vividly how much those surprised and delighted ABC science correspondent Jules Bergman, on hand for Columbia’s first landing in California in 1981.) It seems unlikely I’ll get to a launch (or landing) in person. *sigh*

Which is a SanDisk Sansa Clip MP3 player. Mine’s only 1 GB capacity, but that would be enough to hold about 20% of my CD music collection. Still, it’s not really about having every scrap of music I own in my pocket. It’s about having a portable audio player for music, or podcasts, or whatever, while I’m walking or doing housework. (Especially while walking.)

Little cutie Clip also has an FM tuner. And a microphone, so I can make voice notes while I’m out walking. And a thoughtful soul wrote an AppleScript to automate exporting playlists from iTunes, which makes getting content into the player in an organized way a snap. (SanDisk doesn’t officially support this player for Mac, but it works just fine.)

All that for only $30. Can’t complain. Less expensive and more features than the iPod Shuffle. Slightly bigger than the Shuffle, but that’s only to the good with my thick fingers — player is a little smaller than a flip-top butane lighter. Gonna need to work out a recharge system at work that doesn’t involve plugging it into my work PC, though. The IS Overlords don’t like that sort of thing. I think I can just plug a USB hub into the wall, and then connect the Clip to it.

Anyway, whee.

Also, I’ve taken to using aviation weather forecasts instead of the usual National Weather Service forecast. Of course, AvWx is written in its own arcane language. But happily there are sites around like this which translate from Aviator to English. Yeah, it’s plagued with adverts, Google and otherwise. Small enough price to pay.

Hard on the heels of an FAA rules change which reorganized (and bettered, I think) their treatment of amateur rocketry comes this news:

APCP Not An Explosive, Rules Judge Reggie B. Walton

The short form: in the early months of 2001, and accelerated after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms [and Explosives, a name expansion that came with the Homeland Security reorganization] in its enthusiasm to protect us all deemed ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP) as a low explosive. This required everyone who wanted to have specific amounts (over 65 grams) to be purchase a Low Explosive User Permit, abide by complicated record-keeping and storage rules, and so on.

There’s just one problem: “low explosive” has a very specific definition in existing scientific and regulatory literature, and APCP didn’t meet that definition. But ATF made and enforced the rule anyway. So the two premier organizations of rocketry hobbyists in the US, the National Association of Rocketry (disclosure: I’m a member, if you didn’t know) and the Tripoli Rocketry Association, took ATF to court.

In 2006, the court said, “ATF, go back and look again” — usually a warning sign that standards have not been met. ATF took a look and said, “We have looked and we stand by the classification.” After the usual flurry of refiles, motions, counter-motions, and stalls, the parties got back before the court last week. NAR/TRA members were told afterward that the judge expressed a favorable opinion (to NAR/TRA) in the courtroom, which was good, but it might be a month before the formal decision came down. Lo, the decision was published only a few days later. The court vacated the ATF rule, meaning APCP is no longer classified as a low explosive and ATF has no jurisdiction over hobby rocket motors.

What’s this mean? For ATF, it means if they want to classify APCP as a low explosive, they’re going to have to PROVE the definition according to accepted scientific and regulatory benchmarks … which will be a problem, given it’s already been disproved once (by the plaintiffs and their supporters). I think if it wants to use its resources wisely, ATF should quit chasing wild “what-if” geese, leave rocket hobbyists to manage themselves (which we’ve done quite well for over 50 years), and be about their other business.

For the hobbyists, it will probably mean a return to the pre-2001 rules — which I don’t actually know, but probably revolve around the High Power Rocketry certification process: you have to prove you’re certified by NAR or TRA to buy, you have to be a certain age, and there are apparently purchase/storage limits. Expensive government licenses and more expensive storage bunkers will no longer be required. (This will be a good thing for rocket motor vendors, too.) The NAR and TRA have promised instruction on this in short order, but they’re going to take a few days to review “the old ways” and see if this is a good time to toss in some improvements.

What’s this mean for me? Not much. I’ve already written off plans to enter the high power arena: too expensive. I can make astonishingly big rockets and still stay well inside the model rocket definitions, not spend as much, and have an easier time flying them. But I’m very happy for the NAR and its high-powered kid brother. There are things the government should do to protect the people, but protecting them from non-existent threats is just wasteful.

Over the weekend, I had yet another daft idea: in time for the new movie, create a retro-clone of the first Star Trek roleplaying game (Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, Heritage Models, 1978). I sketched out ideas about what to keep, what to change, what needed adding (lots). In my research, it was brought back to me that the game wasn’t that good. (The author himself expressed this opinion to me, many many years after the fact.) So, I probably won’t, though I have some interesting notions about handling the game and the setting… somewhere in a hybrid between the original game, Traveller, and label-driven games like PDQ or Fudge.

You’d think after my original GURPS Final Frontier for GURPS (3e), and then Final Frontier for GURPS Lite (3e), and PlainLabel Final Frontier for Simply Roleplaying! (2e), and the still-in-draft EZFudge Final Frontier (probably never to be finished unless I find some folks to play with), I’d have learned my lesson. Maybe I have. Or maybe I’ll just try to finish the EZFudge thing by the time the new movie hits.

But in the meantime I discovered Robert Saint John’s excellent Groknard blog and Star Trek Tabletop Games column. Robert is a winner of Rogue Games’ most recent contest for their Thousand Suns “Imperial SF” RPG, and he has a lovely fan-made Star Trek supplement for TS on his website. (And I thought I was late getting into RPG writing when I started 12 or so years ago. He’s the same age as me and just getting started now!) He’s also a TFT fan, so that’s all to the good from my perspective.

Anyway, even a dyed-in-the-wool Star Trek gamer like me can pick up a new thing or two from Robert, so do have a look at his shenanigans. But don’t enter the contest; I want that game, and you entering will just spoil my odds.

Woke this morning to find 6 cm of “chance of snow showers” all over my car. The average drive speed for the commute was held to less than half normal — what would normally have taken 25 minutes took 55.

I don’t mind the timing — the federal water master closes the books on this year’s snow pack at the end of March, so with the storms of the last two weeks, we just might have climbed back close to a normal water year … or maybe slightly better.

But I’m very ready to quit driving in snow for a while.

Continuing the weather-related thread: I got woke this morning a little after 6. ‘Twas the school district, using an automated call system to let everyone know that the schedule was changed for today and school start was on a two-hour delay.

That immediately told me I couldn’t sleep in as much as I thought. (I’ve taken the morning off to deal with semi-annual medical appointments.) I had to have an extra half-hour or so to shovel the walks and driveway.

Yup, it snowed vigorously overnight here, amounting to about 2-1/2 inches on the ground, an inch on the sidewalks (thermal storage properties of concrete helped here), and about 1-1/2 inches of frozen slush and snow on the cars (which apparently don’t have the useful thermal properties of concrete).

So, a quick post here after finishing that up, feed the petagerie (like a menagerie, but not with wild animals), wake the Eldest, and then off to do the morning’s business: dental checkup, blood testing, haircut, visit to the respiratory therapy office to replace some gear and update some records, lunch, and thence to work.

Last March and April: dry, cold, then warming well, hardly any wind.

This March so far: wet, cold and windy. The current forecast calls for snow right through the rest of the week.

The snow and water are welcome, even this late in the winter. But golly, this makes life tough to plan around.

In an online chat the other week, I think I finally clicked on what connects me so strongly to Star Trek (the original series) and not to the others: fun.

You don’t hear stories about Rick Berman and practical jokes.

The later series had a heckuva lotta weight pressing on them, in the form of Expectations: from The Suits, and from the Fans. You just can’t have fun when every action, every word, every setpiece is scrutinized to death for consistency, economy, and, oh, yeah, maybe theatrical value.

But in 1965 and 1966, it was just Star Trek … a television series offspring of Buck Rogers serials and Mary Worth comic strips (cit. Gerrold), trying to deliver a ripping yarn in 52 minutes a week, make some money for the advertisers, and maybe, just maybe, sneak some serious ideas past once in a while.

The offices and set were notoriously chaotic. There was pressure, to be sure, to keep budgets down and production rates up. But in the meantime, there were practical jokes in every department from head office to soundstage, some of which were immortalized on the blooper reels.

To me, it just seems like there was more fun going on, despite the pressures, in 1966-1968. (Third season I won’t include.) Consider this comment from Connor Trinneer: “We’re not a practical joke crew though. We work so long that you don’t have the opportunity to waste time on practical jokes. But Bakula is a jokester in that he keeps it light.” Sounds like a happy enough set, but real Fun leaks through and produces a different product.

Oh, well. Enough of that.