The Umerg team L to R, Greg Oseid, Gary Stroick, Rob Grygar, Dave Leininger, Steve Anderson, Bill Assimies, Tom Tweit.

The UMERG team (Upper Midwest Experimental Rocketry Group) traveled to launch our rocket, Locomotive Breath, at the Tripoli Rocketry Association’s Research rocketry launch, BALLS, on the Black Rock dry lake bed, in NW Nevada, near Gerlach.  The trip out was fantastic, without any mechanical problems, and the weather & driving was great.  We made probably our best time traveling out to this launch on this trip.

With that being said, the rest of the time was interesting to say the least.  We had colder weather than anyone recalls, and wind, which you expect at the Black Rock; but adding the cold to the wind made the trip memorable.  Saturday’s launch was scrubbed at about 1 pm because of the wind.  Temps plummeted overnight to the teens or low twenties, causing trouble with many of the large projects which spent the night on the pad.  Apparently, even though it warmed up a bit on Sunday, the batteries were still cold enough to loose much needed power for staging and deployment charges.  Sunday afternoon’s weather was not much better, with occasional snow squalls randomly moving through the area.  Snow & ice in the mountains east of Salt Lake City made for a white Knuckle drive on the return trip.

UMERG’s high altitude project, ‘Locomotive Breath’, was launched on Friday like many of the projects were, as reports of the upcoming bad weather created a sense of urgency.  The rocket screamed off of the pad much more aggressively than any of us had expected, only to rapidly shred in the air at about three seconds into the flight.  The longest portion of time for the flight, was all of the “rocket rain” fluttering or spinning down in an elongated debris field.

After analyzing the wreckage, it appears that a weld in the aluminum fin to the base flange, may have had a flaw that could not be seen.  The result was a spectacular, but disappointing flight.  Sometimes the things that go wrong are more interesting to watch than the rockets that perform as they should.  It has been said, “You only learn from your mistakes, not your successes”.  Next time we will be using a bolted fin design.  Analysis is still in progress to improve motor performance.

Locomotive Breath at Launch, about 3 seconds before the shred.

Immediately below is a link to a video of the launch and ‘Death Dance’ of Locomotive Breath.

Locomotive Breath

Here is a collection of videos from Balls that you may enjoy.  The videos, ‘UMERG Balls18‘, and ‘Various flights Balls18‘, show a collection of video clips from the UMERG team, and other flights that were videoed.  The videos with the individual rocket names are full length footage of the rocket flight, as much as I could get.

UMERG Balls18

Skydancer III Balls18

Spike Balls18

T2 Balls18

Heads Up Balls18

Cross-eyed Mary Balls18

Lightspeed Balls18

Robert DeHate 2 Stage Balls18

Tim Covey O Hybrid Balls18

And below is a compilation video of rockets that were not with our group, but I had the ability to capture them here.  If you flew at Balls18, you may see your rocket here.     enjoy.

Various Flights Balls18

Well the group has been hard at work getting ready for our trip to Balls18 in the Black Rock Desert, out on the playa of the Black Rock dry lake bed.  Brian and Tom have been getting the bus ready for the long trip.  Many of the group have been active in mixing propellant for test motors, beer keg rocket, and today the mixing is for Locomotive Breath.

Below are some photos of the group working on Locomotive Breath.  I have photos of this because this is the project where my time has been focused.  If anyone in the group has been taking pictures while working on ‘Cross Eyed Mary’ or the bus, let’s get them posted.  The photos are not representative of everyone who worked on this project, only the those who happened to still be around when we thought of taking a picture.  Enjoy.

Dave Leininger laying out pieces before we started working on them.

Steve Anderson tapping a miriad of holes.

Gary Stroick, Wayne Johnson, and Tom Tweit with motor casing/lower airfram after all holes are tapped.

Coupler

Electronics Bay before being turned on the lathe, welded for us by Jim Brown.

Key Lime Green. Painting before assembly.

Fins now painted yellow, looks like a John Deer. Propellant grains in background.

Below are photos from the ‘Cross-Eyed Mary’ project.

Nose cone being made by Pat Arneson, for 'Cross-Eyed Mary' the beer keg rocket.

Nose cone after creative sanding & some paint.

The keg sits in this part, and the nose cone & threaded rods slide down around the keg to hold it in place.

Booster section of Cross-Eyed Mary, the keg rocket.

For 2009 the UMERG team has two Balls projects.  One is ‘Locomotive Breath’, as in Jethro Tull’s song of the same name.  The other is ‘Cross-eyed Mary’ also going on the theme of Jethro Tull.  You know the tunes will be cranked at launch time.

Locomotive Breath, will be a 6″ minimum diameter ‘P’ project with about 14,000 lbs. of  thrust, flying on a blue propellant.  This will be our “Big” project, going for an altitude of about 70,000 ft, as well as down-link telemetry.

Cross-eyed Mary, will be our entry into the ‘Keg Lofting’ contest.  Three teams will be launching ‘Cornelius’ kegs of ‘Home Brew’ beer.  The final rules are still being hammered out, but it will all be in fun anyway.

Another favorite that may also take to the sky, is the return of ‘The Flying Red Bull Table of Death’.

There is rumor that Rob Grygar’s rocket ‘Spike’ may make a comeback in time for the Balls trip.  Stay tuned.

Stay tuned for more on these projects, as this post will probably be updated as time goes on.  Below are some photos of Locomotive Breath’s nozzle carrier/rear retainer and it’s graphite insert.

___________________________________________________________

Today, August 23, 2009, the UMERG team tested an ‘L’ motor with the propellant that will be used in Locomotive Breath.  The motor tested is a scaled down version of the larger motor.  Locomotive Breath’s motor will not be run at as high of pressures as the test motor was.  The test was successful.  Below is a link to the video of the test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBVLkmTyXmY

___________________________________________________________

My nephew Alex and myself (Rob Grygar) before launch

On Saturday June 13^th, I flew my rocket ‘Spike’, for my level 3 certification flight. All went as planned, with the help of many people.

“If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” -  Isaac Newton

I would like to thank those who have helped me in my quest for my successful level 3 flight.  Dave Leininger, and Ron Freiheit spent time and expertise reviewing my plans, and making recommendations to help insure a successful flight and landing. Brian Elfert allowed me to use his motor case for the flight, and he has generously let others use the case. Gary Stroick and I talked about the design late night driving back from Black Rock, to try to keep me awake while driving. The design Gary and I talked about was for being able to fly research motors, and aerospike nozzles. Bill Assimies loaned me his drogue chute, because decent rate calculations were showing too fast of a drop, and I needed a larger drogue. Tom Tweit and Carl Hasbargen helped out at the launch tower. There also a host of others, too many to mention, that encouraged me in the process.

Photo of Ron Freiheit, the other TAP, by his rocket in Black Rock.

Special thanks to my wife Helen, who has constantly encouraged and supported me in the process; she has been patient and understanding. Who could ask for more?  And last but not least, thank you God for the dream, the people, and the successful flight.

Dave Leininger (Right) is one of the TAP members.

Spike just getting started.

1/3 of a second after the previous photo.

Recovey systems performed as planned.

The landing site.

Spike, a 40 lb. rocket, launched off of the pad with a force of about 460 pounds of thrust/second, tapering down in it’s 4.2 second burn time, for a total of about 1,200 pounds of thrust.  After burn out, Spike coasted up to 7,200 ft and deployed the drogue cute, falling to about 1,000 feet above ground, then putting out the main cute for a soft landing.

Here is a video link to the flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytXc0egQkgE

‘Spike’ was conceived and designed as a multi use platform, for use with research motors, testing designs of aerospike nozzles and head end ignition; as well as for experimenting with clustering and airstarts after the certification flight. To accomplish this task, I chose a wider airframe, and six fins for a short stable, and not over stable configuration, to limit altitude and reduce wind cocking.  Below are descriptions of materials, and photos of the build.

Dual deployment, (drogue chute and main chute) is out the front of the airframe.  The airframe is 7.5 inches in diameter, made of craft phenolic tubing, with fiberglass reinforcing.  Fins are made of a composite board, consisting of an inner layer of NOMEX (TM) honeycomb, sandwiched between thin G-10 fiberglass.  The rest of the support structures are made of 1/2 inch plywood.  The deployment of the main chute at 1,000 feet is released by a ‘Black Sky ARRD’.  (Advanced Retention and Release Device.)  The ARRD was held to the core of the structure by a metal plate that I made with my lathe.  The deployment of the drogue chute at apogee, and the main chute at 1,000 feet, is controlled by a Gwiz LCX  for the primary altimeter, and a PML Co-Pilot for the secondary altimeter.  The base of the rocket has three 38 mm motor mounts for air starting motors, or launching off of a cluster of motors from the launch pad.  In the nose cone, there is an auxilliary bay to house a tracking transmitter, which aids in locating the rocket should it land out of sight.

TAP member Dave Leininger after signing the certification form

The photos of the building process can be enlarged by clicking on the thumbnails in the gallery below.

Sunday May 24th saw the successful launch of Big Yeller, for the record of the largest amature rocket launched in Minnesota.

Tripoli Minnesota held it’s research launch on a rocket flying perfect day.  Team Umerg with the rocket, Big Yeller, set the record for largest amateur rocket flown in the state.

Here are some video links to videos of the launch.

UMERG Big Yeller

Big Yeller: Largest Amateur rocket in Minnesota

And below is the link to the on-board video.

Big Yeller North Branch Launch, on-board video

For more information, you can read the article below.

Come watch us fly ‘Big Yeller’, on Sunday May 24th.  We will be setting up and preparing the rocket starting around 10:00 a.m.  The rocket takes some time to prep, so be patient.  When the rocket is set to go, we will launch as soon as possible.  The prep process should probably take a couple hours.

If weather is not good, Monday the 25th is our alternate launch date.

Photos of the nozzle for Big Yeller before assembling the motor.

Here is a proposed press release for the planned Memorial Day Launch of Big Yeller.

200lb Rocket Scheduled to Launch at North Branch Sod Farm

Tripoli MN (www.tripolimn.org) is hosting a rocket launch this Memorial Day weekend at the Harley sod farm located just east of North Branch, Minnesota. There is a rumor going around that there will be an 18 ½’ tall rocket weighing about 200lbs scheduled for the event, According to President, Dave Leininger. This will be one of the biggest rockets ever flown at this location and has an expected altitude of about 14,000ft. The public is invited so check their web site for directions and bring a lawn chair if you would like to witness this auspicious event. “This should be the event of the season” according to Dave and he expects a large crowd for the event. During the summer months Tripoli MN hosts a monthly launch the second Saturday of each month May through November at this same location. “At a typical launch we launch around a hundred rockets varying in size from the small Estes type rockets all the way up to the big bruisers” Dave told us. “You never know what to expect, when we have a good day we can have flights up to 12,000ft 2 or 3 times a day with many other High Powered flights ranging anywhere from a 1,000ft or more” he explained.

This isn’t the first time that this rocket has took flight, as a matter of fact it’s last flight was this past September in the little town of Argonia, Kansas known best for hosting the Tripoli National Launch known as, LDRS. Before that she took flight in the Black Desert located at a remote dry lakebed in Nevada. This year this ambitious team of Minnesotans plans to fly a rocket to over 60,000ft in the Nevada desert. Dave told us that the rocket that they are building will be almost 14’ long and 6″ in diameter holding about 75lbs of fuel and should easily break mach 2. “We should have had this rocket done last year but due to injuries to the main designing engineer it was pushed back to this year’s event” explained Dave. Along with the Minnesota team there are many other teams and individuals that go to this remote spot every year to test their designs at a place so remote that the FAA will allow flights up to 100,000ft. This event is called BALLS, for obvious reasons, and that is where you will see some of the biggest and baddest projects put together by anybody short of the real pros. Dave told us that a rocket achieved an altitude of over 93,000ft at this very same spot just 3 years ago and was followed up by two flights the following two years that went over 80.00ft.

For more information on the upcoming launch or how to join the Tripoli MN club please visit our web site www.tripolimn.org. To find out more about our national organizations or find a club near you look into www.tripoili.org or www.nar.org for more information. To watch the progress of upcoming projects designed and built by the daring young, or maybe not so young, men that brave the desert southwest you should take a peek at our newest group www.umerg.org. Come join the fun and exhilaration of High Powered Rocketry, you won’t find a better group of people anywhere. Remember that big or small we fly’em all at Tripoli Minnesota.

Big Yeller made the centerfold of the December 2008 issue of Extreme Rocketry magazine.

There is also another photo and short writeup on page 30 as one of the featured projects of LDRS. The photographs were taken by Brent Hill at LDRS27 in Argonia Kansas.

Since it’s inception in the Spring of 2008, UMERG has flown a few rockets and attended a few launches.  Hopefully the folks that participated in those flights will post more info here.  For now, here is the list:

Launches we’ve attended in some manor:

• Fire on the Farm 2008
  (Pickrell, Nebraska)
• Rocket Mavericks 2008 International Civilian Space Competition
  (Black Rock, Nevada)
• LDRS 27
  (Argonia Kansas)
• BALLS 17
  (Black Rock, Nevada)
• Tripoli Minnesota (monthly club launches)
  (North Branch, Minnesota)

Rockets we’ve flown as a group:

• Big Yeller
• Totally Screwed (this was actually flown before UMERG was formed, but those who participated in that project became the original members of UMERG.

BALLS 16 was an exciting time for me, especially for several reasons. First and foremost, it was the launch of Totally Screwed (TS), a rocket that was actually a culmination of two years worth of work for the team. Initially the sustainer was designed for the two stage rocket, ‘Glued, Screwed, and Tattooed’ (GS&T) which we attempted to launch at BALLS 15. We had an anomaly at launch of GS&T which caused the fore and aft closures to separate on the booster, and the propellant burned on the pad. We were pushing the envelope to try to create a single use composite ‘O’ motor / airframe. And push the envelope, we did. Not to say that we didn’t learn things along the way. Failing, analyzing, moving forward to try again as long as you don’t quit is what ‘rocket science’ is all about.

Dave with Glued, Screwed, & Tattooed after fire on pad.

Totally Screwed used the sustainer of GS&T, along with a booster of a proven design with the help of advice from Gene Nowaczyk. Dave Leininger came up with a fin design in aluminum, which was cut out and formed and welded, to create a light, tough, fin that worked flawlessly. Dave also came up with the design of the interstage coupler that was used on GS&T as well as TS that proved to be as strong as the forces thrown at it. Dave with his laser work, and my lathe did most of the metal work on the booster and nozzle. Dave also had a specially rolled forward airframe tubing made to fit over the forward motor retainer to form the parachute’s payload bay and slide into the rear of the interstage coupler.

Gary Stroick was our electronics man, setting up the rocket’s staging and chute deployments. Bill Assimes coordinated the launch pad schedule for all rockets firing off of Brian Elfert’s launch trailer. Tom Tweit and Tim Covey were assisting on set up. Totally Screwed, had an awesome liftoff on a column of pure black smoke, but because of a combination of process errors, multiple failures caused it to impact the playa, never to be recovered.  Gary’s estimates of the rocket put it up to an altitude of about 26,000 feet AGL.

Gary Stroick, Rob Grygar, and Dave Leininger with Totally Screwed.

totally-screwed video

This video clip is just having a little fun with Dave Leininger’s “Flying Red Bull Table of Death”.

Dead Bull

Other highlights of this trip, was that the team on this trip was the core of what we now call UMERG. During our BALLS 15 trip we were called ‘The Minnesota You Betcha’s’. And for the BALLS 16 when we flew TS we went by OTC Aerospace, or On The Cheap Aerospace.

This was also the maiden voyage to Black Rock Desert for Brian’s bus. With very few minor problems out and back, it made the travel and accommodations for all of us a party.

BALLS 17 was great, with some disappointments. There were no large group projects being flown. Dave Leininger broke his foot, and materials gathering for the six inch ‘P’ project was slow, so we decided the better part of valor was to delay a year to make sure we did not rush the project.  So a number of individual projects were launched, with some successes as well as some failures.  Still, Balls 17 was a launch not to be missed.  (Did someone say beer keg launch?)  But that’s another story.

Here is a Balls 15 report I dug out of my archives.  Dave Leininger is the prefect of our Tripoli MN prefecture #45.  I hope you will enjoy this report he did for all of the people back in Minnesota who could not go to the event.        Rob. 

BALLS 15 Report:

Well as most of you know myself and a couple of other members of Tripoli MN have been working on a project for BALLS this year. It was a 2 stage rocket with a single use composite cased O motor for the booster and a 4″ minimum diameter sustainer with a Richard Hagensick M 650 engine in it. The following is a short report of the trip, our results and a brief launch report.

The trip there: The original plan was to take the bus that Brian Elfert and several others had been converting over to a travelling Team member/Rocket hauler. Our team that started out with 7 had dwindled off to only Rob Grygar Brian Elfert Tim Covey and myself due to a number of circumstances that were out of our control. Then after hours of hard work put in on the bus by several other team members and myself Brian decided that it wasn’t functional enough to take to BALLS and was going to stay home. Needless to say this put us in quite a bind to come up with a plan B in a hurry. After Rob and I discussed the options we decided to take his van on the trip. Seeing how there were only 3 of us it was quite comfortable and we arrived in the Black Rock desert at about 4pm Thursday afternoon. After we set up and settled in with our camp mates from the Kansas City group we ate a bit and went on with the nightly ritual of campfire propellant burning. I always enjoy this part of the trip almost as much as the rockets and it is a tradition that I’m sure will never die.

Friday: The morning started a bit on the cool side but wasn’t anything like here in Minnesota so it was quite bearable. We still had some work to do so I started right away cooking breakfast when low and behold guess who shows up? Brian. I guess he just couldn’t miss all the action so flew into Reno and rented a car then drove out to the Black Rock. Also joining our group was Richard Hagensick from Wisconsin and his P motor project. Richard also was providing the M motor for our project. After breakfast we got down to business and continued the work on our project. During the day, which was the only commercial launch day, there were very few flights, 3 of them were level 3 cert flights. 2 out of the 3 were not successful but most of the other flights that day were. The day was perfect and everything was landing very close to the launch site. When the launch closed it was off to the frog pond for a relaxing dip in the hot spring, then back for our nightly ritual of fires and propellant burning. During the evening I had took note to the fact that our little area that included team numb from Oregon, Wedge Oldham from California, ourselves and the Kansas City group there was well over 250,000 Newton seconds of thrust. An amazingly huge amount of power. That evening we were joined by some of the heavy hitters in rocketry including such people as Paul Robinson and Jim Rossen of Animal motor works, Wedge Oldham and The record setting Gene Nowaczyk. It’s great to be on the playa at night, not only is the sky one of the most awesome sights you will ever see but the comradery between rocket people is something that you just can’t believe.

Saturday: First up was Richard with his project named RGH’s P Nominal Rocket, 5,4,3,2,1 poof then nothing. Richard had a bit too much thermite and the motor didn’t light. After returning to the campsite from nearly ½ mile away we grabbed one of my triple folded igniters shoved it in and tried again. This time it was 5,4,3,2,1 and wait, wait, there’s the smoke then off the pad it screamed. Richard’ rocket reported back through the downlink telemetry that it had reached apogee at over 46,000 feet for a perfect flight and full recovery. During the day there were many memorable flights including, Wedge’s Nike Ajax on a Q motor, one of the biggest CATO’s I’ve ever seen when team Numb’s Q motor failed 2-3 seconds into the flight, and the biggest and badest Tripoli flight ever when Gene Nowaczyk of Kansas City flew his rocket to over 93,000ft. The highest Tripoli flight ever. We were going for the afternoon high altitude window when the wind came up and we wisely decided to wait until the morning. That didn’t mean the end of the day for us just yet, we had promised Paul Robinson and Robert DeHate they could launch off of our pad with there 2 stage O to N rocket. That flight didn’t quite work as planned when the nozzle decided to blow half of itself out at ignition therefore the rocket was a bit under powered and arced into the wind badly but was recovered though not in the best shape. The day was over so we decided to take another dip in the pond and return for supper and some more fun. Saturday night had some of the biggest propellant burns every witnessed especially with team Numb’s CATO’d Q motor grains.

Sunday: Sunday was the day of carnage, even though Saturday had an almost perfect success rate it was soon back to the typical 50/50 we have come to expect at BALLS. Unfortunately we also added to that when our rocket blew the closures out and burned on the pad. We were able to salvage the sustainer and most of the electronics so it was not a total loss. We did have the most impressive fire though. Shortly after we cleaned up the aftermath of the CATO the wind came up again so we packed it all up and left the playa at about 3pm. We stopped at Bruno’s for a quick bit to eat then on the road again. If you ever make it to Gerlach you have to visit Bruno’s. He has a huge collection of photos from past events including Ky’s space shot, the land speed record setting car, burning man and many other memorable events. We ended the day in Wendover NV and took our time coming home over the next 2 days.

Conclusion: As always it was a trip to remember great time great friends lots of fun fire smoke and best of all we witnessed history being made, heck we were even a part of it. Gene’s record setting rocket launched using our make shift blast defector/ burn pit. I personally wouldn’t have missed it all for the world. I would like to thank everybody involved that made this trip possible, Rob Grygar, machinist extraordinare, Richard Hagensick for providing the M motor, Tom Twiet for his work on the launch tower, Tim Melody his son Collin, Brian Elfert, and Tim Covey for there support. Thanks to all of you and I hope to return next year hopefully with all of you.

Dave Leininger

Prefect Tripoli MN

P.S. pictures to follow