From thunder.sbay.org!zygot!lunacity.com!erps-list_owner Wed May 26 05:32:24 1999 >From ikluft Wed May 26 05:32:24 1999 Return-Path: Received: from thunder.sbay.org by zot.kluft.com with smtp (Linux Smail3.2 #2) id m10mcr9-00084cC; Wed, 26 May 1999 05:32:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zygot by thunder.sbay.org with uucp (Linux Smail3.2.0.92 #1) id m10mcil-0008ZmC; Wed, 26 May 1999 05:23:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from equine.announcetech.com by zygot.announcetech.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #1) id m10mckN-00012dC; Wed, 26 May 99 05:25 PDT Received: from pallas.wallis.com ([206.79.202.17] ident=root) by equine.announcetech.com with esmtp (Exim 1.90 #1) for ikluft@thunder.sbay.org id 10mckH-0001RS-00; Wed, 26 May 1999 05:25:17 -0700 Received: from Plato.LunaCity.com (Plato.lunacity.com [198.144.202.130]) by pallas.wallis.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA17085; Wed, 26 May 1999 05:15:10 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: From: ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft) Subject: Black Rock trip report 5/21-23 (long) To: erps-list@plato.lunacity.com (ERPS list) Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 05:12:12 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text X-UIDL: 7ac14add4678e252690e69f6e380fe1a Sender: erps-list_owner@LunaCity.com Reply-To: erps-list@LunaCity.com Status: RO My previous message about the Black Rock trip focused on what accomplishments JP Aerospace made, like the amateur rocketry altitude record and proving that a GPS receiver can re-acquire multiple satellites on a rocket in flight. This message is about the trip itself. It's long... Everyone probably still remembers last week's scramble to schedule the trip with less than a week's notice. The two of us from ERPS who made it there were Dave Lautenschlager from Colorado and me. Iain Clark's plans to fly to Black Rock fell apart on scheduling the aircraft for arrival before dark at the lakebed. Brian O'Shea had too much work that couldn't be unscheduled. Undoubtedly others thought about it too. BTW, if Iain's plans had looked like they were going forward, we'd have needed to check with JPA about bringing a plane there anyway. After some discussion about this at the event, we think it can be accomodated next time, especially if you want to use the plane to help with the rocket recovery search. :-) Anyway, I got out of town an hour later than I hoped on Friday, around 1:45. With only two very brief stops, I didn't know I'd arrive there with any daylight at all until the last hour of the trip. I set up my tent in strong winds - it took some figuring out how to do that. (Stake everything down first, instead of afterward.) I got to bed by 10PM. Saturday, May 22 I was out of my tent around 3:15AM, ready to help with the balloon filling for the space launch attempt. At the center area of the camp, I ran into Dave Lautenschlager, who was asking the JPA folks if anyone knew me. :-) We introduced ourselves. Dave had originally planned to drive there from Colorado. But he ended up flying by airline into Reno and taking a rental car to Black Rock. He got there around 1:30AM. (JPA had put strobe lights on the traffic cones leading from the lakebed entrance to the launch site, making it navigable at night.) Balloon filling began around 4:30AM. After JP picked the fill-team captains, he started picking others so each team would have a second person who also had experience with their balloon filling. I was surprised when he picked me as one of those - my help in September counted apparently. The Sacramento Channel 10 news crew had put up a small light tower, since they had problems filming the pre-dawn activities back in September. All 10 balloons were filled by sunrise. The air was calm and things looked ready. At 7AM a Cessna 172 arrived. None of us had seen it land. With bad memories of a plane that circled at launch time in September in violation of the airspace restrictions, I was asked to go get the N-number from the plane as an intimidation measure to the pilot, whom we assumed hadn't gotten a briefing before flying there. The pilot wasn't happy with the move but it seemed to get the point across. (See more on this below - we had assumed incorrectly.) The rocket electronics were running late. The rocket's GPS receiver wasn't working, though handheld units were. They got things working and together, but the launch box wasn't out until 8AM. By that time, the winds had started again and were batting the balloons together. When the first two tiers (6 balloons) were in position, I was trying to hold two balloons tied down to the same Helium tank from tangling each other. The wind was really blowing. It was a handful to try to keep them from tangling more. Then one of them popped while I was holding the line. It was an awful feeling but I knew they had spare balloons for this and it became an urgent scramble to fill one. Al Differ came to assist me. Though he tried to reassure me they'd lost balloons this way before, it wasn't much to keep down the feeling that the launch could be delayed because of me. Only the urgency of inflating the spare kept me focused... But apparently it was more out of my control than I thought. Three more balloons popped while we were filling the spare, and that was that. With not enough balloons, the launch was cancelled for that morning. Though JPA had never succeeded in salvaging a balloon once inflated, we tried hard since there were so many. Some were unmanageable in the wind and JP handled popping them to free the crew member from it. But we emptied the spare we'd been filling. And two other crews succeeded in salvaging theirs. (Dave L participated in one of them.) It was disappointing, but nothing like back in September. We were going to be there another day but there was still hope. After cleaning up the launch area, everyone was given a break. Some of us got to talking with the pilot of the plane. He and his passenger were friendly and seemed genuinely interested in what was going on. They had gotten a briefing, which told him of 5 mile airspace restrictions. He had landed 5 miles away and taxied to the site. :-) (We thought it was 10 miles, but figured he'd done OK to follow what the FAA told him.) Since he had taken that effort to comply, we admitted that we didn't have any plans what we'd do when I wrote down his N-number and photographed the plane. He apologized for surprising us and said it was a hastily-arranged trip. He had called JPA's hotline in Sacramento to try to let them know his plans, but everyone was already in Nevada. The big surprise was when his passenger suddenly said, "Are you Ian?" As it turns out, they found out about the event from my e-mail about it to the Cisco Amateur Radio Club. The passenger, Sam Severs, works in Cisco's Bldg N in San Jose. (I work in Bldg E, just down the street.) Sam sent a copy of my mail to his pilot friend, Brad Walker from Sun Microsystems, who told him to meet him at the Palo Alto airport. They really were genuinely excited about what JPA was trying to do there. After another personal apology to JP for the surprise, Brad actually got an invitation to fly in the next morning when he offered to help with the post-flight search for the rocket. Since I'm also a private pilot, we made arrangements that I'd monitor 122.9 (aviation multicom) on my aviation handheld radio, and listen for calls to "Black Rock Launch Site" to give Brad landing advisories. Then Brad and Sam took off back for Palo Alto. Brad planned to be back the next morning. Everyone settled in for the day in the desert. The electronics people got to work to make sure that morning's problems would not recur on Sunday. Dave and I drove to Reno for the day. Each of us needed to buy a few things since neither of us had planned to be there 'til Sunday. And I had promised my nephew (in Sparks) I'd visit on Saturday. We also tried to contact ERPS VP Michael Wallis, who was coincidentally at a conference at the Nugget Hotel in Sparks. But we never made contact with Michael - apparently the conference didn't get out in time for him to return our messages before we had to be on the road again. We got back to Black Rock at dusk. When we got back, everything suddenly turned busy. As we drove in, we noticed a JPA pickup truck abandoned along the line of traffic cones enroute to the camp. We found one of the JPA guys (I think his name is Andy) walking and looking exhausted, with about a half mile still to go. He hopped in the bed of my pickup and we took him to the site. At that moment, another one of their people (John) came walking in from the north. When he could speak coherently (after a drink of water), he gave the GPS coordinates where two more had stopped (Jennifer and another John). They had gone driving early in the afternoon to find the Quinn River. They found it and got their Rav4 stuck in the mud, flattening a tire while trying to get out. None of them were Hams so they couldn't radio in to the base station. They had walked six miles until Jennifer couldn't walk any more. One of the Johns stayed while the other continued the remaining five miles to camp with their GPS coordinates. Since it was getting dark, JP wouldn't let anyone go alone. Pairs of rescue vehicles departed north and south, all equipped with Amateur Radio. Since I have a million candlepower spotlight in my 4x4 pickup, I was sent to follow David Brock KF6CXT on the team to the north to rescue Jennifer and John. Dave L was on our team too. In the few minutes Dave B and the EMT needed to prepare, I moved around some gear in the back of my truck so I could let down the rear passenger seat. The GPS coordinates led us straight to them, just before it was completely dark. It was good we got there when we did - Jennifer was dehydrated and in the early stages of shock. We sat her down in my truck with some water while their EMT checked her vital signs. The simple first aid for shock, a coat, was mostly what she needed (and got.) We drove them back to camp. She was taken into one of the motor homes for the night. The extraction of the Rav4 was not going to be attempted in the dark. The driver was informed that Black Rock is not a place to get stuck in mud. Tow trucks do not respond there. People who do respond charge enough that you may consider buying a new car rather than pulling one out. So each group there is on their own to retrieve their own vehicles. Sunday, May 23 I was up a little after 3AM again. I made my own breakfast and then went to help. Balloon filling started later but caught up with the previous day's progress. They had changed the filling procedure (and rehearsed it Saturday afternoon while Dave and I were in Reno.) Instead of putting filled balloons up their 40' lines, a volunteer would hold each one. The electronics were ready at 6AM. Balloons were moved into position - it was tough to find enough people for this procedure. I helped fill two balloons while monitoring the aviation radio. When the balloons started getting let up for launch position, I started making periodic transmissions, "Attention all aircraft. Remain clear of the Black Rock Launch Site. Balloon launch is in progress." (As it turns out, Brad didn't return on Sunday - he had been too tired when he returned to Palo Alto. It's a safety decision not to fly in that condition.) The balloon stack was impressively high, about 150'. As they winched up the line for the rocket box, the winds at the top seemed to blow around the balloons a lot again. Though there were a few delays, like the pyro launch charge that didn't go off, they finally cut a line to launch it at 6:45AM. And away it went. What a relief to see the launch box leave the ground. This is the point we didn't get to in September. Everyone cheered. I got several pictures as the balloon/rocket package drifted up to the southwest. Everyone gathered back at the control center. The Amateur Radio telemetry indicated the launch box GPS receiver had acquired 12 satellites! The video (also by Amateur Radio) showed the ground or balloons, depending on where they remote-commanded the camera on the launch box. The video turned on and off every few minutes in pre-programmed cycles to conserve power. The telemetry showed it climbing - they gave altitudes in meters and we translated them to feet... 10,000, 15,000, 20,000... But it appeared that it was going to leave the launch permit area, forcing them to consider launching before the preferred altitude of 100,000 feet. It would be over California by then. (With a "cut-off Low" spinning counterclockwise over southern California, winds in northern California and northern Nevada were going westbound.) JP announced the launch would have to become a high altitude test rather than a space shot, because of this problem. The launch was commanded during the next "video on" cycle, when the box was at 27,000 feet. The video crew yelled, "we have a launch". The CNN cameraman had his camera aimed the right direction and said, "I got something." I was looking the right way but I didn't see it. The telemetry crew reported GPS satellites were acquired (which they had been told by some "experts" was impossible. ;-) 50,000 feet... Then 72,000 feet, still climbing at 800 fps (540 mph). There was a gap in the telemetry until it was on the way down. They also armed and fired the parachute charge on the launch box. Radiolocation beacons from both were received on the way down. Measuring 72,000 was good enough that JP claimed the new altitude record for amateur rocketry. And Ky Michaelson, previous holder of that record with a "seventy something" estimate (not measured), confirmed for CNN's camera that JPA got the new record. Then it was time to go recover the rocket. My truck was "Recovery 3", with seven people and a dune buggy in it. (I had to think at first about letting people ride in the back. And then, "Oh yeah, this is Nevada. Nothing's illegal here." Well, that's an exaggeration, but that's a law unique to California.) Recovery 4 (Al Differ) was stationed in Gerlach to act as a radio relay because there were mountains in the way between the launch site at Black Rock Desert and the estimated landing site at Smoke Creek Desert. He eventually gave up when it was clear that the VHF signals bouncing off other mountains gave us direct communications anyway. After some serious 4x4 cross-country exploration, we got Recovery 1 (Kevin, the Recovery Team leader), Recovery 2 (David Brock), Recovery 3 (my crew), Recovery 5 (don't know who that was) and the News 10 vehicle to a meeting point at the edge of the Smoke Creek Desert, a muddy lakebed. We had to follow a maintenance road along the railroad tracks to get there. I went to test the lakebed and made a hasty U-turn. The News 10 crew gave up in order to get anchorman Dale back in time. We launched the dune buggy as "Recovery 3A". Since he needed to go at a 45-degree angle from the road/tracks, we proceeded further up the road along the tracks, which was 4x4-only from there. Recovery 1 and 2 remained at the buggy's entry point. The buggy found the nose section of the rocket. We thought we saw the tail section but it's hard to tell with the tricks these lakebeds play on your eyes. When we walked out 1/2 mile to it, the object was the right size but was really a black lava rock, possibly a lava bomb from Lassen's 1915 eruption. (So we still may have found something that fell from the sky. :-) In the end, the tail section was not recovered. That was where the data recorder was, which was needed to verify the actual apogee altitude. We came back to break up camp. I was out of there around 5PM and got home at midnight. -- Ian Kluft KO6YQ PP-ASEL http://www.kluft.com/~ikluft/ sbay.org coordinator ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (home) ikluft@cisco.com (work) San Jose, CA "California Carpool": a caravan of single-occupant vehicles