Pre-Made Rockets

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues...

I had always been intrigued by the Der Red Max rocket.  It had a combination of modern day, a taste of history, and a forbidden German flavor as well.

But then one day, there was a listing on eBay for a COMPLETED Der Red Max... but it had been modified to accept a 24 mm motor.

I looked at the add carefully, and couldn't see any downside.  I eventually pulled the trigger on it, and the seller very reliably shipped it to me for $25 total.  I was pleased.

When I unpacked the rocket, the finish was beautifully red, and the fin fillets were the finest I had ever seen.  I couldn't have done anything near as professional and good looking.  So I resolved that I didn't want to launch it just anytime, but when conditions were favorable, and I could take my time.

My opportunity came a couple of weeks later, when the club held a launch late in the season.  I also recall that our launch field suffered from unequal mowing.  The RC Club had a neatly mowed square of grass for their take offs and landings on alternating weekends with our club. But almost immediately outside of that 100 foot square, the hay field had grown to almost waist high grasses.

This made it extremely difficult to walk in, let alone hunt for a downed rocket.  When walking through the grasses, you had to pick your feet up very high, and as a result you got tired very quickly.

When I launched my Der Red Max, it went up smoothly and evenly with no problems.  And then under parachute (blue and white, as I recall) descended nicely and evenly for a gentle touchdown.

Unfortunately, I had looked away from where it came down, while securing the launch controller, and I couldn't spot where it was.   I took a bearing to the bush I had thought it lined up with and started walking out into the weeds.

I walked straight and true, directly to where I thought the rocket had come down, but as I got 150 feet into the weeds (tall grass), I hadn't seen any sign of it.  I kept going, directly toward a bush on the edge of the field.  As I got to the 200 feet point, the field dropped off in a slope down to a drainage creek that separated the fields, and so I kept going down to the creek edge.  Hunting for a crossing point, I spotted a narrow place with a bare patch of dirt for me to jump.

My mistake.  The bare patch was mud and silt, recently collected from some flooding rains about a week earlier.  I took a running leap and cleared the creek, but my right foot plunged down into the muck, up to my knee, and I fell forward, barely getting my left foot on firm grassy ground.  I pulled my right leg up (the mud had not closed in on my leg, but it had gripped my tennis shoe, and pulled it off.  I was barefooted when I got up on the bank.  Quickly, I turned around and reached down into the straight shaft of the hole where my leg had been... grabbed the tongue of my shoe and pulled it up and out.

I had spent about 20 minutes looking in the field for my rocket, and my trail through the tall grass was very clear (like a deer path through grass) only when walking in line with it. However, from the sides, you couldn't tell that anyone had passed.  As a result, several members of the rocket club, losing sight of me in the weeds, had come looking for me.  And they were rightly concerned about me when I dropped out of sight over the hill.

As I mounted the rise on the far side of the creek, I heard one shout from across the creek, "I can't see him...he's not over here."  Quickly, I pivoted and called out, "Here I am" as I held up my shoe and explained how I had gotten stuck in the muck.  "What are you doing over there," he asked? "That's way too far."  I walked the long way around, back to a bridge across the stream, and then back to the car.

What a clean-up I had to do.  The shoe was caked with mud, and the white athletic sock that I had been wearing was permanently stained tan.  Eventually, I had to limp back to my car at the flight line and used my canteen to pour over the shoe and wash off as much mud as I could. I cleaned up reasonably well.  But the socks were a loss. I took them off, wadded them up, and tossed them in the trunk for later unsuccessful laundering.

But back to my rocket hunt.

Eventually, I looked again and could not find my rocket.  I launched one or two other smaller rockets which were successfully recovered near the launch pad.  But the Der Red Max was almost a lost cause.

As we began to strike the launch gear for the day, I asked all the remaining members to reassemble at the launch pad, and asked them to take their positions when I launched my Der Red Max.  I asked them all to then point to where they thought it had come down, hoping to triangulate and get a sense for how far out in the weeds it had gone.  They complied and everyone pointed.

One person stood next to me and told me that he though my bearing toward the bush was just a little bit too far right.  I started walking the same path into the weeds again, and he called to me to correct just a little to the left.  I corrected and began walking through untrampled grasses.  After about 75 feet, I stopped and looked around. No rocket yet.

I called back to confirm where I should be heading, and he corrected me slightly to the left again.

Within ten feet, I came upon the blue and white parachute, gently laid out on top of the shorter green grasses, well down from the tops of the waist-high grasses. Below it was the Der Red Max, still in a vertical orientation.  You had to be right on top of it to spot it.  When I compared where it was found to where I had originally walked, I was about six feet too far left.  You HAD to be right on top of it to have spotted it.  I felt relieved.

I went back to the launch pad, happy that I had found the rocket after all.  I tucked the chute back into the body tube and stored it away.

I thought of this again, as I have been weighing the purchase of a completed Majestic rocket this week.  Would I tempt fate again?  How good will the construction technique of this prefab rocket be?

I don't have an answer yet, but I do encourage you to be diligent when watching your rocket touch down.

This has been the Thrifty Rocketeer, saying, don't forget to triangulate!