LUNAR Demo at the 2005 East Bay Radio Controllers Aeromodeling Show

Sunday October 2, 2005

Photos by Bill Orvis

LUNAR is becoming a standard attraction at the EBRC airshow. This year we tried to launch 12 rockets during the lunch break and managed to get most of them off.

There is a writeup about the airshow in the September edition of the EBRC newsletter The Carrier.

LUNAR was there in force with a whole range of rockets for the spectators to see and gently touch.

We mixed up the flying of rockets and airplanes.

Joe Heckenback manned the launch controller as we lined up our rockets along the side of the runway.

We lined up 12 pads with a mixture of rockets.

First off was Bill Orvis' Space ship one which fllew fine but had a slight problem with a tangled chute on the way down. Next was Bill Orvis's Mean Machine which had a perfect flight. It tried to get lost but the LUNAR crew went out after the show and found it on the hill side just waiting to be found.

Next off is Greg Wong's two stage that stages from a D12-0 to a D12-5. Greg tried again with his G80 powered Aerotech Mirage. The motor CATO'd on the pad with an unexpected bang. Luckily, it only blew out the nozzle so the rocket was undamaged.

I missed a few but I think this is one of Conner's rockets. He had another one that ran on a D10 that we just couldn't get to light. I'm not sure whose rocket this was but ir flew really nice.

On the last pad was Eric Kleinschmidt's hybrid burning NOS and paper. It was a really loud and fast rocket. With a new engine installed, we finally got Greg Wong's Mirage off to a perfect flight.

Of course, this was an airshow and had more than just rockets. It also had Jets. There was a lot of speculation in the LUNAR pit area about how high a rocket would go with one of those miniature turbine engines in place of a rocket engine. No one there was willing to foot the $1000 price tag for an engine to try it.

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LUNAR was there in force with a whole range of rockets for the spectators to see and gently touch.

We mixed up the flying of rockets and airplanes.

Joe Heckenback manned the launch controller as we lined up our rockets along the side of the runway.

We lined up 12 pads with a mixture of rockets.

First off was Bill Orvis' Space ship one which fllew fine but had a slight problem with a tangled chute on the way down.	Next was Bill Orvis's Mean Machine which had a perfect flight. It tried to get lost but the LUNAR crew went out after the show and found it on the hill side just waiting to be found.

Next off is Greg Wong's two stage that stages from a D12-0 to a D12-5.	Greg tried again with his G80 powered Aerotech Mirage. The motor CATO'd on the pad with an unexpected bang. Luckily, it only blew out the nozzle so the rocket was undamaged.

I missed a few but I think this is one of Conner's rockets. He had another one that ran on a D10 that we just couldn't get to light.	I'm not sure whose rocket this was but ir flew really nice.

On the last pad was Eric Kleinschmidt's hybrid burning NOS and paper. It was a really loud and fast rocket.	With a new engine installed, we finally got Greg Wong's Mirage off to a perfect flight.

Of course, this was an airshow and had more than just rockets. It also had Jets. There was a lot of speculation in the LUNAR pit area about how high a rocket would go with one of those miniature turbine engines in place of a rocket engine. No one there was willing to foot the $1000 price tag for an engine to try it.