Bdale’s lost L3

[muleParticipant]

I spent about 5.5 hours walking the area today with no luck. At this point, I assume it’s either stuck down in one of the nooks in the washes I didn’t get to, or someone picked it up.

Can you show about where you walked on a map for us?

[Bdale GarbeeParticipant]

Heading for the airport right now, but will pull the tracks off my handheld GPS and use them to cobble something up tonight or tomorrow.

Bdale

[muleParticipant]

I didn’t go up today, I had to stay in the area. Sorry about that…..

[Art HoagParticipant]

Well, Bdale’s rocket is still at large. Joe Hinton and I took off this morning around 10:30 and flew around the North Site for a good 45 minutes. We covered a lot of area and Joe spent a lot of time starring down into the washes, pass after pass, no rocket, no parachute, nothing but dirt and grass. At this point I would say that it has been picked up already, however, if anyone is out there looking for anything, keep your eyes open.

This whole deal bears a striking resemblance to last Oktoberfest when James lost Big-EZ. I hope that at some point YikStick will turn up like Big-EZ did. Sorry to Bdale for the loss, at least for now. Come home YikStik!

Art

[Chad]

It was such a nice day I went for a walk on the prairie today at the North Site. I covered about a square mile thinking I might run across Adrian’s G record attempt or YikStick. I spent about half an hour scanning the terrain in the distance south where YikStick nosecone was recovered- no luck. I also walked the western arm of the gully complex (I’ll see if Adrian can update his search map).

Since Bdale found his nosecone, I was wondering if he had a predicted landing point for the main tube given decent rates. Seems like you should be able to make a linear interpolation based on decent ratios.

Beautiful day, even though I came up empty handed.

[Bdale GarbeeParticipant]

In California on business at the moment. Thanks to all for the effort expended so far! I’ve got the tracks from my GPS receiver showing where I’ve searched rendering in GoogleEarth, but I haven’t figured out how to share that yet. The descent rate of the bulk of the rocket under main should have been slightly higher than the descent rate of the nose cone and payload assembly, so I really would have expected to find the rocket somewhere between where the nose cone was found and the launch rail. The area I searched was more or less from that line to the east, though I had visibility with binoculars fairly far to the west of the line and went up the hills to the NE of where the nose cone was found far enough to sweep the area to the east when I was there last Wed, so I really feel like the search a decent effort.

Fingers crossed someone calls, I guess.

[Chris Russell]

We went for a long flight over this whole area this morning around 9:15 to 10:30 and turned up nothing. Flying a Cessna 182 at very low level 400~500 AGL and sometimes lower we checked out all the canyons and washouts in about a 5nm circle east of the launch area. I had two others to look while I flew and we came up empty. The only conclusions we can come up with, are if someone on an ATV found a new treasure or somehow the chute did not deploy and the rocket buried itself deep in one of the washouts. We also flew some of the canyons farther to the north of the area in the possibility that some strange wind carried it farther out; all to no avail. At this point, I would say Bdale’s only hope is that whoever found it, finally calls him.

[Bdale GarbeeParticipant]

Based on pre-flight calculations, I’ve been assuming the descent rate of the bulk of YikStik under main was slightly faster than the descent rate of the recovered nose cone and payload bay assembly.

The experience I had with a larger chute of the same design during my successful L3 cert flight at Hudson Ranch now suggests to me that the descent rate of the bulk of YikStik should have been substantially higher than the nose cone. That means I think it’s closer to the launch rail than previously thought, not farther away as some have speculated.

On my 10″ Goblin, the Team Vatssas spreadsheet predicted about 21 fps under the chute my wife sewed for me, but my measured descent rate from MAWD data was closer to 32 fps. (Fortunately, the Goblin was built like a tank, so it sustained no damage despite the higher-than-expected descent rate!) I now assume a similar mis-scaling factor applies to the slightly smaller chute we made for YikStik, and its descent rate would have therefore been closer to 30 fps than 20 fps.

Of course, if the two sections got far enough apart at altitude, they may not have been subjected to exactly the same wind patterns during descent. [shrug]

Bdale

[James Russell]

Well over the years with recovering my rockets or helping someone else with theirs it always seems that we go way past, and then come back and find it much closer then we had thought. I think the BigEZ was the only one that I think might have gone farther then I thought but I still do not really know were it was found. I would have to think now you might be in the ATV area or in the wash just behind there if it has not grown legs. I still think it will turn up somewere.

[Chad]

Bdale,
The nosecone and main airframe would be subject to the exact same wind on the descent, just have different residence times in each wind layer. Thus, they should be found along the same line from the pad. Since you know where the nose cone was, you are at a distinct advantage.

As I mentioned, I spent a lot of time this fall walking the prairie, mostly looking for Adrian’s rocket. So I can tell you where it is NOT. Send me a private email and I’ll give you my search map.

chadair at mac dot com

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