Chasing the Eggs

Tom Hail, LUNAR #440

At last August’s “Morning After 42” contest launch, there was a D Dual Egg Loft Duration (DDELD) event that several of the pros and a rookie were competing in. See Alan Marcuum’s article in the last ‘clips issue for the rookie’s story. One of the pros competing was Brett Buck, a long time rocketeer that I work with at Lockheed Martin. He had made what he figured to be the ultimate in D Dual Egg Lofters and was going to blow his competition away. That’s not what he said the week before at work, just what I had envisioned since I couldn’t see how anyone else was going to have a chance. He was going to use a 18mm D composite motor from Apogee instead of the standard D12 Estes motor which meant a smaller and lighter rocket with a great boat-tail to reduce drag. It would be rail launched, no launch lugs to hold it back. The balsa bulkhead under the eggs was drilled to lighten it. The body tube between the eggs and the motor mount was just a velum cone. The parachute was going to be 50+ inches of light weight mylar.

The point of this competition is to keep 2 eggs aloft as long as possible, using a D size motor and returning the eggs to the contest table intact. My impression anyway.

So, contest day arrives and Allena and I are out flying our rockets, Allena goes for the set duration event and I watch Brett prepare for his DDELD attempt.

Brett is finally ready and gets pad 1 assigned, he sets up his rail launcher and slides in his DDELD rocket and hooks up the igniter. But all is not perfect, the igniter fails and he has to replace it. But the second attempt succeeds and I start the stopwatch on my wrist as it leaves the rails. Of course I am not an official timer for this launch but I want to keep track myself.

The flight is perfect, straight up and fast. Maybe a little faster than Brett had anticipated. I am not sure now how high it went, I recall about 3 or 4 hundred feet when the ejection charge went off and that huge parachute came out. No problem. The trackers can easily see it, the mylar either being black against the blue sky or shining brightly. But it is drifting off towards the creek and the baseball fields to the east.

I watch it, Brett watches it and starts to follow it. The trackers keep it in sight. Minutes pass. It is drifting to the east but is not descending much at all! I keep seeing it but I have to keep my daughter in sight also.

After returning my attention to it after a few minutes, I see that it seems to be headed towards Tesla or Mines road. I am not doing anything at the moment and Allena is in line for her next launch, so I tell her that I’ll be back soon, I am going to get into the car and maybe chase Brett’s rocket down. I can see it in the distance, floating along, not going up or down at all! The wind taking it off to the east.

I got out to Tesla Rd and stop and yes it is still out there, over the vineyards north of the road and floating along happily. But it also seems to be bearing more northeast now. I follow along and go up Vasco road towards Livermore Labs. Brett’s rocket and 2 eggs are now over the high security Labs. I am hoping no one thinks this is a weapons protest for egging the Labs. I hope I am not arrested for it! I better not admit I know anything about the eggs.

But the rocket continues over the Labs and finally start to descend. I am still with it, and I remember that my watch is still timing it. Watching from the side of the road, the rocket descends and I stop my watch when it lands in a cow pasture. 35 minutes and 18 seconds from launch. Wow and if only the eggs are still intact and a cow doesn’t step on it!

I drive around looking for a way in but the closest is a gate about a mile away. Nuts. Oh well, the shining mylar is keeping the cows away as it flaps in the wind. I start walking and get to the rocket under the gaze of the bovine audience. The shroud lines are tangled in bushes but otherwise everything seems intact. No oozing egg stuff. I hoof it out of there with Brett’s rocket, trying to keep from jarring it too much with my fast walk… I am worried about how long I am leaving my daughter alone with all them geeky rocketeers. Actually I am more worried about her mother finding out how long I left her with those geeky rocketeers.

Anyway, I get back to Robertson Park and drive up to where the contest table is. Brett is there, getting ready to leave and I call him over to the car. The expression on his face when he saw what I had in the front seat made the effort worthwhile. He never expected to see it again. It was very entertaining.

Brett took the rocket over to Carl Reisinger, the contest director and he opened it up, to check the eggs. It looked good, it looked good! NOPE! The upper egg was cracked. Padding Brett had placed between the eggs had slipped and the upper egg had cracked while sitting on the pointy end of the lower egg. Oh man! That made it a disqualification. My 35 minutes didn’t count anyway since I wasn’t an official timer and the official timers had lost sight of the rocket. I think if the eggs hadn’t cracked, they could have used the time until they lost sight, but even the slight crack there was too much.

This was a fun contest and I hope to see more in the future, even unofficial ones within the club would be entertaining and give us all something more than just faster/higher/noisier to do with our rockets.