The UMERG 2010 Balls trip to Black Rock
The trip to Black Rock
This years trip to Balls19 was a great year for successful rocket launches, but different as far as travel there and back was concerned. First of all our group was divided by those flying and those driving. Not a big thing in the grand scheme of things, however a change in the dynamic never the less. Those driving had a surprise when our axles for the trailer came off 400 miles from our destination. In the middle of the night, in the middle of Nevada we heard a loud thump and a bit of a jerk like we had ran something over. When we went out to check the tires we found out that the trailer was missing a complete axle and the other one was askew. As we were outside checking things on the side of the interstate someone stopped to tell us the axle was in the passing lane a ways behind. We called highway patrol to inform them of the matter and pulled forward a quarter mile to get to an exit and to see the mile marker to better locate the hazard in the road. After we spoke to the highway patrol someone else pulled up to let us know they saw the axle and moved it out of the roadway. (Whew!) After locating another trailer to rent, towing assistance, and a weld shop where we could leave it for repairs we headed back the 30 miles out of town to the trailer on the side of the highway.
When going to transfer equipment from the damaged trailer to the rented trailer so the trailer could be loaded onto the flatbed, we found out that the axle had been stolen from the median of the interstate. We had the weld shop mount the only axle we had and lightened the trailer on the return trip. After a 14 hour delay we were back on our way to Black Rock.
Trailer photos by Tom Tweit.
Trailer being loaded onto flatbed after finding out the other axle was stolen.
This year we had driving the bus and the trailer out to Black Rock, Brian Elfert, Tom Tweit, Tim Covey, Dave Leininger, and myself. Flying out to Reno and renting an RV then driving to Black Rock was Gary Stroick, Gerald Meux, and Steve Anderson.
Once on the playa we connected with Gene Nowaczyk, Craig Snyder, Mark Brown, as well as the Tripoli Southern Minnesota group with Richard Hagensick, Ron Freiheit, Andy Limper, Carl Hasbargen, and others.
Balls19
The weather this year out on the playa was the best that anyone has seen in years, great weather for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with the wind coming up a little on Sunday shortly after noon. Even then the wind was just the normal breeze you get from heating and only blew up the dust that was disturbed by driving around the camp.
This year Team UMERG put up only tried and true rockets with nothing really pushing the envelope, this being said all flights were successful except for Tim Covey’s rocket ‘Hybrid 4-5′ which appears to have suffered damage from a previous launch attempt. It appears that the nitrous was bleeding off as fast as it was going in, leaving it essentially empty when attempting the launch.
Steve Anderson had a great launch on an N1900, got video of this flight from back on the flight line in the video at the bottom.
Big Yeller, Team UMERG’s project
Big Yeller, UMERG's group project taking off the pad
Big Yeller on a Pitch Black Sparky motor
Spike
I had the opportunity to launch a motor in my rocket that from start to finish I did everything, design, mixing, etc. Working with the UMERG team I had helped mix motors for the last 5 years. This time was the first that I has gone through all of the steps to work it through, going from a small ‘G’ test motor and scaling it to a near full ‘M’ motor.
Rob Grygar's Spike on an Everclear M motor
Tripoli Southern Minnesota’s ‘Miss September’
The TSM group launched their rocket ‘Miss September’, a two stage huge rocket with a ‘P’ motor in the booster and a ‘P’ motor in the sustainer.
Graphic for Miss September
Tripoli Souther Minnesota's 'Miss September'
Both Andy Limper and Ron Freiheit launched their 2 stage rockets as well, I captured Andy’s flight on the video at the bottom.
72,000 ft flight
Curt Newport and Jeff Taylor launched Proteus 6.5 off of the UMERG launch pad to 72,000 ft. The flight was perfect with both telemetry and a camera. Proteus captured a wonderful photo at apogee. Congratulations Curt & Jeff.
Curt Newport preping the camera on Proteus 6.5
72,000 ft. with Pyramid lake 50 miles away.
Tim Covey’s ‘Hybrid 4-5′
Tim Covey made an attempt to launch his rocket called ‘Hybrid 4-5′ on Saturday of Balls, and the rocket went just off of the rail then fell down to the side of the pad. Tim said the rocket was miss fueled and the tank was empty. He was able to get more nitrous and worked to get the rocket prepped for Sunday. On Sunday the rocket went a little higher and just seemed to hover for a few seconds, then fell to the side of the pad once again. Upon inspection later Tim was able to find out that on a previous misfire a crack developed that he was not able to see which allowed the nitrous to boil off as fast as it was coming into the tank.
Tim Covey, Craig Snyder, Gary Stroick, & Bruce Lee.
Here is a link to a video that shows our launches as well as those of others we were able to capture.
