ROC-Stock VII

by Geoff Canham, LUNAR #493

My step-son Matt's school finished on June 13, so I drove down to Carlsbad (near San Diego) to bring him and all his gear back home for the summer (how can one 15 year old collect so much in two semesters?). But I had noticed in NAR's Model Rocketeer that ROC (Rocketry Organization of California) was having a three day meet (ROC-Stock VII) out at Lucerne Dry Lake, near Barstow, that weekend, so we stopped off there on the way back.

The meet started on the Friday and went through Sunday, with night launches on the Friday and Saturday, but since the commencement ceremonies at Matt's school were on the Saturday, we didn't arrive until the Saturday evening.

If you don't like getting your car dirty, this may not be the site for you, as the final part of the trip is down a very dusty dirt track, but it is worth having to clean the car afterwards. The collection of campers and cars parked out on the lake made it very easy to identify the site, and the dirt track was clearly visible from Highway 247, as another vehicle was already heading down it, leaving a large dust cloud in its wake.

We arrived just before sunset on the Saturday, in time for the night launch. We had two rockets prepped with lights, which flew fairly successfully, although one of the parachutes didn't fully deploy. The light stayed on until it hit the surface of the desert. It was an entertaining evening, although there seemed to be more fireworks going up (to the chagrin of the organizers) than model rockets. The requirement for night flight at ROC seems to be only that the rocket have some form of light, not necessarily visible at launch, so a number just had light sticks tied to the shockcord.

Arriving back at the site on the Sunday morning about 9 am, the days activities were already well under way. The majority of rockets being launched were high powered, and at one point they had a drag-race of seven rockets, including three or four J's - a real impressive sight! Their launch pads don't have interchangeable rods, so you have to specify which rod size you require. If you can fly off a 1/8" rod, I'd recommend you to do so. I launched three rockets off 1/8" rods while Matt was waiting for a launch pad with a 3/16" rod to become available.

The flights that go wrong are normally the most interesting, particularly one (not one of ours) that ended up flying an almost horizontal wavy course just above the surface of the desert, thankfully away from the cluster of vehicles and humans.

And I shouldn't forget the rocket that left the pad like a bullet, followed by a "POP!" as though it was staging, even though it was a single stage rocket. The "POP!" indicated that it was the first rocket of the meet to break the sound barrier.

There were a number of differences between that launch and a LUNAR launch, but one thing was much the same: they had a marked lack of volunteers for RSO and LCO!

Information date: March 16, 1998 lk