For the launch held August 20, 1995

Contest Report:
LUNAR Regional II '95

by Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

The second LUNAR contest for the year is now history. We had advertised it as a "Regional" contest which, in NAR parlance, means a contest between several (at least two) different clubs over a fairly wide geographic area (at least one of the contestants has to come from at least 50 miles away). We didn't have any problem with the latter requirement since many of our members live outside that circle, but despite advertising the meet in "The Model Rocketeer" (the NAR newsletter), "Sport Rocketry" magazine, "High Power Rocketry" magazine, the "rec.models.rockets" newsgroup on the Internet and the "Sport Rocketry" forum on CompuServe, no one but LUNAR members showed up! Of course, this doesn't make any difference to those of you who came out to compete just for fun, but for those members who are also NAR members and were competing for points in the national standings, it means we had to downgrade the meet to a "Sectional."

For those of you keeping score, a Sectional is the lowest level contest implying, as it does, a meet within just your own section. This doesn't have any restrictions on who or how far they come as long as they're NAR members. Next up is an Open meet where at least five NAR members compete, and only 2/3 of them can be from the host section. A Regional needs at least ten NAR contestants, and again at least 1/3 must be from other clubs or "independent" plus, of course, the distance requirement mentioned above. The highest level of competition is the National, called NARAM (the NAR Annual Meet) which is held once a year at rotating locations around the country. The higher the level of the meet, the higher the "weighting factor" in the results since, the theory goes, the competition will be tougher from wider areas.

Before getting to the results, I have to give a big thanks to all who helped out, but I want to single out William Walby. Not only did he fly in three of the four events (and took 1st place in two of them!) but he made the 100 mile drive down from Sacramento early enough to help with the setup, flew his events, helped with range duties in between, Judged Sport Scale (the only event he didn't enter) then helped with the equipment break down before starting on the 100 mile trip home. A real trooper who gets a standing-O in my book!

Thanks, too, to Ron Baskett who did real-time training of rookie tracking crews and got them in shape to turn in sub-1% tracking closures for the contest events! Warren Massey gets a special nod for hauling out, in addition to the regular launch equipment, the tracking theodolites which he set up on their 1,000 ft baseline and then manned the comm center talking to the tracking crews and reducing the data to get the altitudes. While he wasn't involved in the contest launch directly, Prez Mark Weiss gets extra credit for manning the Sport Range LCO almost single handedly all day!

Following are the results of the contest, but I'll skip the blow-by-blow since those of you who were there already know what happened, and the rest probably don't care :-) I'll throw in a few comments for each, though. I've included everyone who flew, even those who aren't NAR members since for our own local purposes it doesn't matter. I've noted the non-members only so those who are trying to keep track of NAR points will know not to count them.

In order of increasing engine size events:

1/2A Flexwing (Exhibition only, no NAR points)

1 Marissa Baskett* 36 sec

2 Royce Longacre 27 sec

3 Lynn Kissel 20 sec

This went very well for an exhibition. Marissa Baskett was up first with a QCR "Auta Sight" which was trimmed a bit steep but glided steady. Royce was next with his scratch built "no name" with a gorgeous, glass-like finish (which he kept apologizing for!) which ejected and started on a nice, flat glide until it took a sudden, unexplained nose dive. Last was Lynn "Dr. Knots and Colors" Kissel who got a nice boost on his "MAS" (Modified Auta Sight), but the glider Red-Baroned all by itself.

A Altitude

1 Tim Maier* 740 ft (non NAR)

2 Ron Baskett 574 ft (non NAR)

3 William Walby 496 ft

4 Tim Hansen 389 ft (non NAR)

DQ Lynn Kissel no track/no deploy

Lots of flyers, but not many NAR points generated. Tim Maier got an outstanding flight as did Ron Baskett (which was flown proxy by his son Larry since Ron was out manning a tracking station), but since neither of them are NAR members, first place in NAR points went to William Walby. Note: Ron didn't know it was his own rocket that he was tracking since we flew the entrants "blind" to the tracking crews.

B Streamer Duration

1 William Walby 1:50 sec

2 Lynn Kissel 0:55 sec

3 Larry Baskett* 0:53 sec

4 Royce Longacre 0:43 sec

4 Paul Pittenger 0:43 sec

An event where everyone qualified! William Walby walked away on this one with his eyes closed, getting nearly double the time of second place Lynn Kissel. Royce Longacre turned in a respectable time with a scratch built model that he still kept apologizing for (while I was busy combing my hair using the fins for a mirror :-) Paul Pittenger entered a blast from the past: the top stage of an Astron Delta!

C Eggloft Altitude

1 Jack Hagerty 775 ft

2 Larry Baskett* 652 ft

DQ William Walby 969 ft (no recovery)

DQ Lynn Kissel 548 ft (no recovery)

Not as many entrants as last time (but we used the same eggs which had been in my refrigerator since April!). William got an absolutely outstanding vertical flight, but had no recovery deployment. Lynn got barely half the altitude as William and had his 'chute not deploy due to a body tube blowout at ejection (not a CATO, he theorizes that the tube was weakened by cutting slots in it for TTW fin mounting).

Larry Baskett's entry had a nice boost with mild weathercock, but his ejection went off a bit early and cut his total altitude.

Noting how far Larry's was drifting in the wind, I aimed considerably up wind and traded off some altitude for a shorter walk (which was still 1/4 mile across a running creek and briars landing only 70 feet or so from Larry's!). Post flight inspection of my entry, though, showed how much luck plays in this contest. The chute opening must have been quite violent as one of the shrouds had ripped free. However thanks to Ed LaCroix's excellent attachment technique, the line actually stayed attached and about 10 square inches of the canopy ripped free, dangling below the chute. More frightening was the fact that the snap swivel (the lock-over wire type) had ripped open and only by complete coincidence had it snagged on the long Kevlar shock line keeping the 'chute attached to the model!

Sport Scale

C Division:

1 Jack Hagerty,

Titan IIIB/Agena 855 pts

2 Lynn Kissel,

Space Shuttle 550 pts

B Division:

1 Larry Baskett,

Sandia Sandhawk 845 pts

2 Marissa Baskett,

Astrobee 500 600 pts (non-NAR)

1 Jack Hagerty

2 Larry Baskett*

3 Lynn Kissel

A good example of how you can win by being too dumb to quit! What would have been the first place C Division entry (a stunning Saturn IB) was withdrawn about a half hour before the qualifying flight due to the builder's (probably wise) reluctance to fly it in the increasing wind. I had my tired Titan III from NARAM last year (with some new, cleaner fins) which had a great flight despite rocking like a metronome set to "jazz" on the pad preflight!

Lynn's Shuttle was supposedly STS-1 (white tank) even though the Orbiter said "Enterprise" on the side and it had a more Challeger-like flight profile :-)

There was also a extremely nice Jayhawk that was entered by another B Division member (sorry, I didn't get your name), but, never having entered any type of any contest in the past, he didn't know about the scale data requirement and couldn't scare up a photo of the real thing in time. He went on to have more fun flying it on the Sport Range to the applause of the crowd.

Despite the lack of diversity in the attendees, everyone agreed it was a fun contest. We'll do some more next year, but have to figure out how to advertise better locally!

Copyright © 1995 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

Information date: Oct. 14, 1995 lk