KCAR Launch Report: Piper Middle School

Launch date and time: May 17, 2004 at 8:00AM
Launch location: Piper Middle School
Launch wind and weather: Cool and very breazy early, changing to warm with lighter winds later

Forward:
The club was honored to be invited to assist with Piper Middle School’s launch day again this year. We are grateful for the opportunity to assist and to give something back to the community and hope we can continue activities like this at Piper and elsewhere. The following report includes the viewpoints of the various participants, including members of the club, and the student’s comments (be sure to take the time to read those) along with the launch data and stats accumulated during the launch.

Christian writes:
What another great year with Piper middle school and this time it was better with a little help from my friends. I was very grateful first for Randall Jessee helping out with one day of building at the school and then back out again for the launch. Alan Shaffmaster, Rick Collins, Martin Ashwell, and Tim Burger were more help than I could imagine and I really did get to enjoy the moment even more.

This year I was able to help out in class during the week and give a lecture on engines including topics on Newton’s theory, thrust, center of gravity and pressure. Another highlight during the same day was the recognition of National Space Day. I didn’t even plan on that coincidence but was able to pass out two handouts, bookmarks, and sky maps to all and encourage those future rocket scientist to keep looking up.

Photo by Christian Bruggeman

The launch day went perfectly even though a it sprinkled a little as we set up. Winds were from the southwest at 5-9 mph with periods of calm and great times to launch. Alan was even able to get a couple of Aerotech engines in for demonstration and the thrill of the kids was priceless to see the big stuff. There were approximately 120 launches in a shorter time frame than last year so the extra help came in handy.

Tim gave instructions for the day on engine prep and igniters, while Randall, Alan, and Martin gave last minute prep to any rockets needing help. Rick was the best at recovering any rockets that went to out of bounds territory and Alan even met a friendly neighbor, Gary, to help him paddle a canoe and drive a golf cart in recovery operations. Give all three of those guys a GOLD STAR. Tim had enlisted a student from each class to fill out the logs and we were able to secure extra help from Megan. She really “took charge” when we gave her the power and also deserves a star. Various students were able to push the button and all were ecstatic when the projects left the pad.

I got the best end of the detail by just taking a few pics, eating the parent’s cookout of hot dogs during lunch and just a general overseer of the day. Did I do anything but enjoy myself? Twenty or more kids running down the hill with rockets in hand was the site of the day and all five classes got to launch once or more with a high rate of success. The logs truly show the day of flight and fun with comments from the students on their special day.

Since the students were graded on technical reading and building a project another thank you goes out to Bob Wingate for the use of his engine demo case and to Martin Ashwell for the extra body tubes. These tools were great for class and I used them to their fullest.

The “Fix-it” tables manned by Alan & Martin Photo by Tim Burger

Certificates were passed out to extra helpers of making the day a success and all received a certificate of participation. A special award does go out to Marlene Dailey (8th grade science teacher) for having us this year and a big thank you to Larry Breedlove (Principal) for letting us participate in their mission statement: providing a supportive learning environment in which each student will dream, believe, achieve, and excel with responsibility and integrity. We really did get to see that first hand through rocketry.

Another day of great memories for both students and adults.

R. Christian Bruggeman
NAR #82573
NAR 505 Sec/Treasure

Tim writes:
Launching with the Piper school kids really started last year when Christian became involved at the request of Cindy, one of the teachers at the school. When Christian was telling her about the assistance we had provided for another school she wanted to know if we could help with the Piper launch, too. Unfortunately, the notice last year was too short for us to fully mobilize and Christian wound up handling it all on his own! (See his report and the photos from last year.)

Rockets are launched in pairs. Photo by Tim Burger

This year was a different story, however, since we knew about the Piper launch well in advance. Some of the club members, including Christian, even devoted several hours during the previous week to assist with the construction of the rockets in the classroom.

So launch day finally arrives! The weather wasn’t all that hot as it was cool, overcast, and a bit on the windy side. Christian had arrived before I did and was already carting stuff down to the field. We had the whole first hour to get set up and Mrs Dailey sent out two young gentlemen to help tote stuff down to the launch site and get the equipment rousted out. They had a pretty good start on setting up while I was still messing around with cleaning up some very rusty launch rods. In the mean time, Randall arrived and started lugging stuff down, too.

Since Christian had done this before, we let him decide where to set up and what mode we would use for the day’s launching. We set up on the edge of the field based on the wind direction, which was unfortunately blowing across the short dimension of the field directly toward private property. We were able to overcome this to some extent by angling the rods into the wind. For range setup, we’ve had pretty good luck with running the cables in a tight group to the center of the launchers and then forcing the kids to walk around to the back side of the pads. This keeps tripping on cords to a minimum and also allows the LCO and others at the table to see what’s going on and allows for good photographs, too.

Pandemonium Photo by Randall Jessee

At the start of the second hour, a class of about 25 students came charging down the hill and it was sheer pandemonium for about 10 minutes while we figured out who needed a motor and wadding. We finally had some rockets ready to launch and the first six fliers went out to the pads accompanied by my helper and me.

We cycled through the group, two rockets at a time, until we ran out of time. Those who did’t get a chance at the pads came back during the lunch hour. It was necessary to police the pads to make sure that first time fliers recieved priority over those who had already flown—I ticked off a couple of students by forcing them to remove their rocket from the pad to allow someone else a chance first.

At the start of each hour, I would enlist the help of one of the students to write down the names of the fliers and their rockets (the logs below are a direct result of this record keeping). Enlisting a student who is already familiar with their classmates ensures speed and accuracy with this little chore. The reward for this assistance is to help at the LCO table “flipping switches” and annoucing over the P/A system. This seems to work pretty well, but you might have noticed that only girls where selected. The reason for this is that the main requirement for the job is that the helper must have legible handwriting. It seems that only girls are able to meet this requirement! The gauntlet is down, gentlemen! During one of the hours, the assistant turned out to be so good at helping that we invited her to come back for an additional hour. I appologized to her for keeping her out of class and she replied; “It’s OK, it’s math class.” Some things don’t change, do they?

The weather started to break a little during the lunch hour, with the sun coming out from behind the clouds, and the wind veering a bit towards the West and dropping in velocity some. It did help the recovery situation a little, but since it didn’t fully swing around we were still losing rockets onto the private property to the North, and now a lot of the rockets were taking a swim in a large pond into the bargain! The property owner had called during the second hour with his concerns over kids on his property, and the school made arrangements with them to allow one of the adults to collect any wayward rockets that drifted that way. Rick cheerfully volunteered for this duty and spent a good deal of time chasing down lost rockets. At the end of the day, Alan went over and knocked on a door to ask if he could use the owner’s paddle-boat to collect rockets in the pond—getting no answer, he tried the next door down and found the neighbor’s father who not only let him use the paddle-boat, but went along to help paddle and brought him and the recovered rockets back up to the field in a golf cart!

Working with these kids was a great deal of fun. Helping them get their rockets set to fly and everything hooked up was sometimes challenging, sometimes frustrating (more so for the kids) and always fun. I think we are all hoping to be invited back next year. I love it when the administration staff says “Thank’s for coming!” As though we’d have missed it!

Tim Burger
NAR 78486 L1
KCAR 505 Sr. Advisor

Randall writes:
Thank you for letting me share in the KCAR educational assistance program at Piper Middle School. The staff, the students and the teachers were a pleasure to work with. I am looking forward to the next school year and the opportunity to participate in another KCAR student rocketry experience.

The statistics for today were 118 flights made by 90 rocketeers burning 119* motors for about 936N — that’s a ‘J.’ There was only one staged flight (* which was not logged, unfortunately), and no clustered flights.

Flight Log

Flight #	Flier	Rocket	Motor(s)	Comments
1	Cory H.	Red Adventure	B6-4	It flew good basically
2	Luke H.	King Tiger	A8-3	Crash dummie
3	Ryan S.	??	C6-3	It was very cool
4	Aaron S.	RBG	C6-5	Good rocket
5	Jared .	Hot Fire	B6-4	It needed a C engine
6	Nikki S.	Screaming Mimi	C11-3	Think it could have used the big engine
7	Madeline S.	Renegade	C6-5	I think it did very well
8	Kathy L.	Sorcerer	C6-5	Got caught in a tree
9	Alex F.	Python	B6-2	I think we did very well
10	Anna M.	Peg Leg Pete	B6-6	B engine was not strong enough
11	Hillary F.	Hillbug	B4-4	It did a very good - flying hi
12	Krysten W.	Patriot	B4-4	Drop streamer timed at 9.75S. Flew very well
13	Zach S.	Fiesta	A8-3	It was OK
14	Dallas M.	Rocket Kamakazee	B6-4	It flew pretty good
15	Shawn J.	Guardian	C6-5	It went very high
16	Michael N.	Big Daddy	D12-5	It flew good, parachute messed up
17	Mercedes R.	DPST	C6-5	It flew OK
18	Mercedes R.	DPST	B6-4
19	Kelsey C.	Frazzle	B4-4	Very happy, it flew well
20	Bridget H.	Executioner	D12-3	It flew good; I recovered it
21	Luke H.	??	C6-5	Death-spiral into building
22	Jessica	Sizzler	B4-4
23	Luke H.	Kubelwagon	B6-4
24	Kathy L.	Sorcerer	C6-5	Flew pretty well
25	Nikki C.	Cheshire Cat	C6-3	Flew good
26	Chris B.	Guardian	C6-5	Too far, went high, lost engine
27	Mitch S.	Tarzan	A8-3	Shot 560 feet
28	Marshall P.	Professor Chaos	C6-7	Streamer got caught
29	Brett F.	Guardian	C6-5	Flew far, really high
30	Mike R.	Not Lame	B6-4	Really high
31	Tarrah M.	Tarrah 2008	C6-7	Lost, found
32	Katie S.	Baby Bertha	B6-4	Did Good
33	A Welker	Anaconda	B6-4	Perfect
34	Matthew Y.	Yankee	A8-3	High, broke two fins
35	Daniel D.	Ghetto ?	A8-3	Bad, crash
36	Steven X.	Yankee	A8-3	Cool
37	Ashley B.	Teeny Black	A8-3	Didn’t launch
38	Amber J.	Big Purple	B4-4	Lost - it went high
39	Mitch S.	Tarzan	C6-3	Lost
40	Kyle A.	Kyles Rodent	C6-3	High, broke in pieces
41	Stephanie P.	C. C. C.	B6-4	Pretty high power
42	Lauren K.	Sid	B6-4	Went nowhere
43	Steven X.	Totally Tubular	C6-5	Nice!!
44	Chris B.	Guardian	C6-5	Nice catch
45	Mitch S.	Brett Mobiletd>	B6-4	Proxy flight
46	Megan B.	Star Dart	B6-2	Cool, but it went really hi
47	Kayla F.	Guardian	B6-4	Good, went as high as its supposed
48	Adam C.	Baby Bertha	A8-3	Pretty bad
49	Haley F.	Guardian	B6-4	Good, just did go very high
50	Kenny K.	Patriot	A8-3	Flew really bad - no air
51	David D.	Gemini DC	C6-5	Flew great, bad landing
52	Jake T.	Sizzler	C6-5	Flew in sun - lost
53	Kara T.	Sizzler	B4-6	Good, high
54	Justin P.	Star Dart	A8-3	Straight up (high)
55	Nate W.	Stormcaster	D12-5	Went pretty high - blew apart
56	Nick C.	Little Debbie	A10-3T	Nose cone wasn’t glued on
57	Brock Y.	Executioner	D12-5	Caught 2 times by Thomas Parry
58	Brock Y.	Executioner	D12-5
59	Matt N.	Paveway	B6-4	Drop weight timed at 12.88S
60	Alan Shaffmaster	Mustang	E28-4	!
61	Nick W.	Courier	C6-3	Flew good
62	Tyler S.	Stormcaster	D12-5
63	Michael R.	Yankee	A8-3
64	Jake H.	Zinger	B6-2	Drifted to northern field
65	Brock Y.	Executioner	D12-5	Went up straight, came down great
66	Chris B.	Guardian	C6-5	Flew really high
67	Matt N.	Paveway	B6-4
68	Steven X.	Totally Tubular	C6-5	Awesome
69	Tyler S.	Stormcaster	D12-5	Swiz
70	David R.	Gemini DC	C6-7
71	Chris B.	Guardian	C6-5
72	Tarrah M.	Guardian	B6-4	Flew pretty good
73	Kayla H.	Guardian	B6-4	Awesome
74	Kody K.	High Flyer	A8-3	Perfect Rocket
75	DJ H.	Stormcaster	C11-5	Went high
76	Daniel D.	High Flyer	C6-7	It stunk
77	Andrew R.	Big Betty	C6-5	Did awesome, but drowned
78	Thomas P.	Totally Tubular	C6-5	Did good
79	Kristy C.	Cosmic Cobra	B4-4	Cool
80	Jennifer P.	Stormcaster	D12-5	Went high
81	Megan P.	Wild Thing	C6-3	Flew good
82	Khloi S.	Liberty	C11-5	Good flight
83	Kody K.	High Flyer	A8-3	Did bad
84	Mike S.	Storm Caster	D12-5	Went high
85	Kayla H.	Guardian	B6-4	Very bad
86	Rory H.	Gold	C6-3	Egg broke
87	DJ H.	Stormcaster	D12-5	Lost & was found
88	Alan Shaffmaster	Mustang	E15-4	!
89	Megan P.	Wild Thing	C6-3	Perfect
90	Khloi S.	Liberty	C11-5	Drop weight timed 12.46 x 18
91	Byron	Oreo	D12-5	Fun
92	Amber J.	Carrier	C6-5	It was bad - blew up
93	Rory H.	Gold	C6-5	Awesome - ended up in pond
94	Mike S.	Raven	D12-5	Awesome but lost in the pond
95	Molly O.	Flower Power	C6-3
96	Laura F.	Fabulous	B6-4	Went pretty high, perfect on . . ?
97	Anissa V.	Little Betty	C6-5	Went very high count’t see it - lost
98	Ellie L.	Golden Rod	A8-3	Didn’t go that high but had a good landing
99	Taylor S.	Screaming Mimi	C6-5	Flew into football field, not that high
100	Brandon L.	K - U	C6-7	High to the right, parachute didn’t come out
101	David G.	Orange Cow	A8-3	Went good until lost in forest
102	Alex J.	Renegade	B6-4	Stuck in tree 20 feet up
103	Aaron B.	Echo Star	C6-5
104	Britney W.	BP	B6-4	Flew real good and high but didn’t come down
105	Katie H.	Altitude	C6-5	Flew really high, then turned toward school
106	Andrew H.	9882 ZAN	C6-5	The parachute bound up and it hit a bus
107	Emily S.	Wriggler	B6-4	Shot off, came down totally awesome
108	Alex J.	Renegade	B6-4	Rocket in tree 30 feet in air - bad landing
109	Aaron B.	Echo Star	C6-5	It flew bad cause I lost it
110	Rikki W.	Sparkles	A8-3	Shot off, went high, came down
111	Tiara D.	It	C6-5	Shot off, came down
112	Daniel K.	The Revolution	C6-5	Flew kind of high went in the pond
113	Diana D.	Cosmic Cobra	C6-5	Shot off, went high
114	Devin A.	Baby Bertha	C6-5	Shot off and landed on private property
115	Donald A.	Fiesta	C6-5	Went spiraling up, came . . ?
116	Alina C.	Billy Bob’s Party	C11-5	Shot off, came down
117	Zack M.	Gemini DC	C6-7	It flew up then turned and took off
118	Nick C.	Little Debbie	A10-3T	Blew up, nose cone wasn’t glued on good enough

Students get their rockets ready to fly Photo by Christian Bruggeman	Flights by Rocketeers Flights Rocketeer(s) 4 Chris B. 3 Luke H. Mitch S. Steven X. Brock Y. 2 Aaron B. Nick C. Kayla H. DJ H. Rory H. Amber J. Alex J. Kody K. Kathy L. Tarrah M. Matt N. Megan P. Mercedes R. Khloi S. Tyler S. Alan Shaffmaster Mike S. 1 Byron Jessica Devin A. Donald A. Kyle A. Megan B. Ashley B. Kristy C Alina C. Kelsey C. Adam C. Nikki C. Tiara D. David D. Daniel D. Daniel D. Diana D. Alex F. Brett F. Jared F. Kayla F. Hillary F. Laura F. Haley F. David G. Jake H. Bridget H. Andrew H. Katie H. Cory H. Shawn J. Daniel K. Kenny K. Lauren K. Brandon L. Ellie L. Zack M. Anna M. Dallas M. Michael N. Molly O. Thomas P Jennifer P. Justin P. Stephanie P. Marshall P. Michael R. Mike R. David R. Andrew R. Nikki S. Madeline S. Aaron S. Katie S. Ryan S. Taylor S. Emily S. Zach S. Kara T. Jake T. Anissa V. Nick W. A W. Rikki W. Britney W. Krysten W. Nate W. Matthew Y.
Getting rockets ready Photo by Christian Bruggeman
The range in action Photo by Randall Jessee
Hooking up at the pads Photo by Tim Burger
Christian supervises launch control Photo by Randall Jessee
Waiting for a turn on the pads Photo by Christian Bruggeman
Megan & Tarrah handle launching Photo by Tim Burger
Helper Nikki & Tim supervise at the pads Photo by Randall Jessee	Rockets Making Multiple Flights: Flights Rocket Rocketeer 4 Guardian Chris B. 3 Executioner Brock Y. 2 Echo Star Aaron B. Little Debbie Nick C. Guardian Kayla H. Stormcaster DJ H. Gold Rory H. Renegade Alex J. High Flyer Kody K. Sorcerer Kathy L. Paveway Matt N. Wild Thing Megan P. DPST Mercedes R. Liberty Khloi S. Stormcaster Tyler S. Tarzan Mitch S. Mustang Alan Shaffmaster Totally Tubular Steven X.
Student get their rockets ready to fly Photo by Tim Burger
Randall assists a student Photo by Christian Bruggeman	Totals by motor: Motor Number Flown Impulse (Newtons) A10 2 4.00 A8 16 37.12 Total A’s: 18 41.12 B4 7 30.03 B6 27 116.91 Total B’s: 34 146.94 C11 5 44.00 C6 46 405.72 Total C’s: 51 449.72 D12 13 218.92 Total D’s: 13 218.92 E15 1 39.76 E28 1 39.69 Total E’s: 2 79.45 Total: 118 936.15 (J)
Lunch! Provided by some of the parents. Photo by Randall Jessee	Megan & “Wild Thing” Photo by Christian Bruggeman
Amber (I think) Photo by Christian Bruggeman	Another group gets ready at the pads Photo by Christian Bruggeman

Submitted by
Christian Bruggeman NAR 82573
and Randall Jessee TRA 9516 L1
and Tim Burger NAR 78486 L1
With special thanks to our record keeping helpers,
Nikki, Megan, & Molly.

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Page created on May 24, 2004.
Last updated on October 26, 2004.