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TRIPOLI Pittsburgh

Launch Report

October 6, 2024

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Flyers: 21

Flights: 35

Francis Graham is not only one of the founders of TRIPOLI but also regularly attends launches and provides unique reports on such.

Francis' report follows on this page.

Report by Francis Graham

This is an account of the October 6, 2024 rocket launch conducted by the Tripoli Rocketry Association Pittsburgh Praefecture. It was held at the Dragon’s Skull site near Republic, Pennsylvania. But actually it is in the municipality of Isabella, Pennsylvania. Which is kind of good that the municipality is named after a far-sighted Spanish Queen.

Without Isabella, there would be no Columbus Ohio. Having been turned down by Portugal, Chris Columbus took to King Ferdinand. Royal advisors at the University of Salamanca said he would fail; the 40 to 80 foot long wood sailing ships would never make it across the 12,000 miles of ocean between Spain and China. Of course, there were two continents in the way, but Ferdinand’s advisors had no way of knowing that. Isabella took the chance that something might come out of it.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Isabella had not? England was not yet a seagoing power, and was caught up in the Tudor thing, and France had other issues. Eventually the Chinese merchants would have found the Americas, sold gunpowder and ships to the Aztecs, and, then being on a technological equal footing, but better warriors, the Aztecs would have conquered Europe ! Then the Europeans would have been “celebrating” Indigenous Peoples Day in Montezuma City, Prussia. History sometimes turns on some hefty chests of jewels.

Back to rockets.

The October 6 Launch: Innovation and Matriculation

The October 6 Tripoli Pittsburgh Prefecture launch was arranged through the hard work of President Joseph Pscolka, Prefect John Haught and many others. Many of the people that came to the launch that day—in fact, a majority of them—were engineering students at the Morgantown Campus of West Virginia State University. However, some of the Tripoli “regulars” were there, such as Tripoli National Treasurer David Rose, former Tripoli President Kenneth J. Good, Pittsburgh Secretary-Treasurer Robert Camele , Kevin Wunchevich, Jerry Andre, and Scott Kissinger. And: yours truly.

Francis Graham

TRA #0001

Kent State University

John Haught once again flew his “Hot Sauce” on a J241 engine. This Applewhite-like saucer uses very sparky motors and its high drag limits its altitude and causes it to become horizontal over the car area. It was one of the innovations of which I speak, but honestly it seems a bit scary.

Joe Sheppard with his Estes-sized rocket that can attain half the altitude of a commercial airliner.

Ken Good and others wait for the Space Blaster for flight.

WVU students watch the action while preparing their rockets for flight.

Spurred on to More Innovation

One of the last launches of the day was Kenneth Good’s KG-32 Hotspur, certainly also in the innovative group of launches here.

See more on Ken's flight on the next page.

Dr. Bob Camele’s “Mega Initiator” also flew well on a J. Kevin Wunchevich’s “Ugly Red” fortunately did nothing ugly, but his rectangular parallelopiped shaped “Snoopy Dog House” bordered on stability. On the instability side, alas.

In the matriculation department, Kyle Rodaker’s XL-02 gained him Level 1 on an H219, and Oska Scholund’s “Dancing Queen” earned her the same. ABBA dabba do.

Scott Kissinger flew his “Dart Express” on an I 469.

One of the West Virginia students also tested a high-density composite fuel as a static test. I thought this was very innovative -- using a 3D printed special nozzle a small rocket was constructed using this fuel, which resembles a small Estes model rocket in size and diameter, but which is mostly fuel. It could easily pass through an RSO at a standard NAR model rocket launch or even a contest. But its resemblance is deceptive. This rather tiny rocket can go up 17,000 feet altitude! Higher than the height attainable by a standard high power rocket on an M engine at our launch! (Note: one of those was attempted but scrubbed due to ignition problems).

The KG-32 Hotspur uses engine feed staging, an innovation developed by Kenneth Good in a long sequence of rocket vehicles. In engine feed staging, there is one unitary rocket fuselage, but the separate solid fuel engines are sequentially shuttled to the rear and fired until exhausted, and then ejected. Rather than use mechanical and CO2 gas ejection, as he did with his larger engine feed staged rockets, the Hotspur used the engine ejection gases themselves to ignite a deliverance charge.

Curtis Hughes, a co-founder of early Tripoli, recently encouraged the innovation side of Tripoli. Tripoli, he said, (I paraphrase) was never meant to be just a hobby service organization like the National Association of Rocketry is. The whole organization was founded on innovation and space-oriented progress in rocket science. Kenneth’s work is square on with Curtis’ dictum.

Goto:

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