NHRC at 1999 Ballunar Liftoff Festival

    The NASA/Houston Rocket Club / Tripoli Houston model rocket activities at the 1999 Ballunar Liftoff Festival at the Johnson Space Center were a big success again this year Despite uncooperative winds that blew toward the crowd most of the weekend and finally blew the festival away altogether on Sunday afternoon, the club launched more rockets than ever before,  including more high power and smaller rockets from newer members and youngsters. In addition to the rockets, other supporting events <G> included contests and displays with nearly 100 hot air balloons, skydiving contests and demonstrations, and demonstrations of all sorts of flying contraptions from hang gliders, motorized parasails, and ultralights, to kites and radio controlled airplanes and helicopters. 
   The mission of the Ballunar Festival  "is to help the public learn about aviation and space exploration, and to sponsor and fund educational activities that encourage young people to learn about aviation and space and to study mathematics and the sciences".  The rocket club advanced this theme very well getting great interest from kids, both young and old, asking questions and viewing our displays and picking up club materials all weekend. In all, festival goers picked up 70 membership applications and 30 fliers for the next NHRC sponsored contest, the Gulf Coast Regional to be held in October. Member turnout  was great to man the booth, answer questions, maintain a large static display, and even walking about the crowd with rockets in hand to answer more questions.  
  About 65 rockets were launched throughout the day Saturday and Sunday morning, with more ready to go before the storm hit in the afternoon. Unofficially, the number of High power launches was at least 8 rockets on "F" motors, 4 on "G"s, 4 "I"s, 5 " I"s and even two launched on "J" motors! 
  One K-1100 powered rocket was also ready to launch on Sunday, but was grounded along with another J motor rocket when we could not get the FAA waver extended from 1500' to 3500' as we had applied for and were granted all day Saturday. Apparently the Sunday guy at Houston Approach Control was not advised of what had been agreed to earlier. 
  Due to the unexpected north wind blowing in toward the crowd, the Saturday morning launch was held to model class rockets, which were set up a little closer to the crowd. About 15 "C" and "D" powered rockets were launched with very good success. Almost all fired on their first try and landed well clear of the crowd.   
     With the wind shifting and dropping off around noon, we were given the opportunity to get an extra launch window open when one of the glider groups (I think) was not able to fly. Club members really hustled and got of about 10 rockets including high power at that time. Then our regularly scheduled time in the afternoon was extended to about 45 minutes. After launching the first volley of rockets that were set up and ready to go, it became a real free-for-all as we reloaded and launched "at will" as live country music played in the background. The sound an sight of those big rockets going with the  music blaring in the background was Fantastic! W should have a live band at all our launches!  

It was HOT, but there were plenty of rockets.  Note the new NHRC banner!

      It was during this time that Chuck Webb launched his 1/2 scale Patriot missile on a J motor, but was caught by a strong wind shear, or an early deploy charge causing it to come apart about 500 feet up and seperate from it's parachutes. The motor chuffed for a few seconds before lighting off, possibly burning into the ejection delay, or the wind gusting through the area at that moment  My rocket launched immediately afterward on a "F" motor also caught that wind and major thermal, staying up for about 8 minutes, and drifting well out over NASA before changing course and coming back to land squarely in the normal recovery area in front of the crowd. David Bacque impressed the crowd with his perfect staged deploy, the parachute popping out at only 250 feet! I
      On sunday morning the wind was again out of the north. We were able get off several big rockets this time, but were constrained to 1500 feet by that little FAA problem. My apologies to those that brought out rockets, but were unable to fly due to the altitude constraint. The weather finally shut the show down around 2:30 when strong winds blew over several tents including the large stage cover, a lot of the fence, and knocked out the PA system. The rocket club came out OK, however, as we got most of the big rockets out before the storm hit and set the EZ-UP down low over the rest, while hanging on to the tents with all our might to keep them from blowing away. Actually, after two days in 98 degree heat, the rain and wind felt great, but too bad it did such damage to the festival. 
   I wish to thank so many members of the club for all the help in putting on a great rocketry show. It really took all of you to keep things going on such a hot weekend! As vice president of NHRC,  I was supposed to be in charge of co-ordinating the club activities, but between scheduling conflicts and lack of high power rocketry experience, I  really relied on all the great help from our membership. Club President Tom Lanier came up with the idea of setting the high power equipment "across the ditch" from the flying field, so we could leave things set up and ready to go. He, along with Andy Eng, Chuck Webb, and Lee Spinner came out on Friday to get all of that set up including mowing the launch area and setting up the pads and launch controllers. Tom also took care of keeping the FAA notified throughout the weekend, while Lee Spinner did an excellent job of announcing the  launches and relaying other launch information to the festival announcers. Andy also continued throughout the weekend to help me to keep things organized.  Special thanks also go out to those that stayed in the booth or launched rockets; hope I don't leave anybody out : A.C. Deblanc, David Bacque, Clet Landry, club secretary/treasurer Ron Ammons, Jim Jares, Mike Prasek, Michael Williams, Dr. Jon Mitchell, Michael Martin, and to our younger members for their help in launching and recovery : Justin Butler, Steven Ammons, Steve and Erin Prasek, Mirriah Benson, Brian Patterson, David Ghere, and Chad Webb. 
      Finally, thanks to the Ballunar Liftoff Festival for allowing us to share the experience of model rocketry, and particularly to director Al Saylor for his great support and help in finding the space and time for the club to put on a top rate rocketry show.

Thanks again for the great turnout,  lets do it again, only even bigger and better,  next year...

Warren Benson