Big Bertha

Plan downloaded from JimZ site. Paint purchased from Hobby Lobby, except candy apple red was from some old paint I used on model cars. All other supplies purchased from Hobbytown USA. Used plastic nose cone instead of balsa (I hadn't located BMS at the time). This was the first rocket I have built in about 25 years. Also, I painted this one before I discovered Flex Mask. What a pain! The entire rocket was brush painted. One of the best flyers in the fleet. It's flown at almost every launch, perfect flight and recovery every time. Blake thought it was ugly when first built, but he has grown to have a lot of respect for it. Another one of Brad's favorites.

First flight - Blake's school yard. Winds calm. Launched with B6-4. Perfect flight and recovery.

Second flight - same site. Launched with B6-4. Again, perfect flight and recovery. Winds were evidently a little higher at that particular time. Rocket drifted towards some folks who were watching from their back yard about 50 yards away. They started to get a little anxious as the rocked drifted closer and closer to them. It almost landed on their truck. They went in the house after that.

Third flight - YMCA soccer field. Winds about 15mph, gusting to 20mph. Launched with B6-4. Perfect flight, but landed in a tree. Took us forever to get it out. The tree couldn't be climbed. Manny, a friend from church, and his two boys, Esteban and Tomas, and one of their friends, Stephen, came to watch and help in recovery. His daughter, Francesca, came along too but sat in the car with Gail and Teresa most of the time; it was a pretty chilly day. First, we tried throwing a football up to hit the branch, hoping to jostle it from the limb. It was near the end of the branch, but the shroud lines were wrapped around it. So, although we hit the limb several times, it wouldn't come loose. Manny finally located a rope used to cordon off the parking lot and tied a stick to one end. We then threw it over the branch (after a number of tries) and yanked down over the rocket catching the parachute and literally ripping it out of the tree. Unbelievably, the rocket wasn't damaged at all and only a couple of shroud lines were pulled from the chute. I believe God answered our prayers.

Fourth flight - Brad's place. Winds about 10mph, gusting to 20mph. Launched with B6-6. Perfect flight and recovery. Started worrying whether the delay was too long, but the charge went off when the rocket was about 100 feet up. Brad was able to catch it in the air. Perfect engine when the winds are high.

Fifth flight - Brad's place. Winds about 5mph, gusting to 10mph. Launched with C5-3. Another perfect flight and recovery. Really zoomed with the bigger engine. I caught it by Brad's truck. Blake says, "It almost hit Brad's truck."

Sixth flight - Brad's place. Winds about 15mph, gusting to 20mph. Launched with A8-3. Bad idea using the smaller engine. Barely got a hundred feet in the air. Parachute ejected about 20 feet off the ground. We were lucky. We had included two of the little plastic parachute men, so I thought we'd better not send it too high or we'd lose them. We didn't lose them. As a matter of fact, they didn't even have a chance to unfurl chutes.

Seventh flight - same site. Launched with B4-4. Much better flight. We lost one of the little parachute men, though. Poor guy never had a chance; he separated from his chute. We located the chute, never found the guy. Blake said, "He probably buried into the ground."

Eighth flight - Springfield Park. Winds about 10mph, gusting to 15mph. Launched with C6-5. Excellent flight, disastrous recovery. We had packed in four of the little parachute guys, and I think it just overloaded the ejection charge. Instead of blowing off the nose cone, it blew out the entire engine mount assembly. Buried into the concrete parking lot about 30 yards from launch site. Shattered the nose cone, crumpled the body and shattered the base of one fin. She was a great rocket. We will look for her in Rocket Heaven.