Stratofox participates in AeroPac's To100K, August 2005

As a club project of AeroPac, To100K was the largest ofhundreds of rockets that members brought to launch in the desert.It's intended to break 100,000' altitude, which has never been donewith commercial hobby motors.The inspiration for To100K is that AeroPac always gets a 100,000' airspacewaiver at Black Rock anyway - members believe it's now possible to use thewhole thing so it's time to do so.

If we can get video or still pictures, the curvature of the Earth willbe clearly visible from that altitude. (As a rule of thumb, you can seethe curvature above 60,000'. The view gets better the higher you go.)

The To100K project was only doing a test launch of the rocket to 25,000'this time.The result of this test was mixed.The booster (1st stage) performed flawlessly.The sustainer (2nd stage) drogue chutefailed to deploy, leaving a small debris field to pick up.That was later traced to preparation errors. It appears all theequipment does work as designed, even at high altitude. There is aspare airframe from which a new sustainer will be built for another try atAeroPAC's XPRS in late September.

Stratofox didn't have as much of an opportunity to help with tracking andrecovery because of the debris falling close enough to the launch siteto be seen in the distance from the tops of RVs.However, when we come to help, we intend to help.We were able to make these contributions to the effort...

• After some To100K team members raced to the first visible piece ofdebris, Stratofox member Ian Kluft KO6YQ and visiting participantMartin Hemphill of Taipei, Taiwanmade a mobile binocular sweep to identify the total area of the debris field.
• Stratofox has found that after all the work one puts into building alarge rocket, it's Human nature for at least some of the rocket's buildersto run to recover it without taking water or drinks.Stratofox has learnedthat safety of searchers is part of our role and we need to be ready for this.We had more than enough cold drinkson hand for everyone in the search area who needed them.
• To100K team member Erik Ebert noticed that a transmitter he contributedto the rocket did not come back with the debris. It was a late additionand wasn't among the frequencies that Stratofox members were informed tomonitor. Once we got the frequency, we noticed it was transmitting butcould only be heard in the debris search area, but not at the AeroPac flightline less than 1/2 mile away. Stratofox members Will Galloway AE6EY andSteve Palmer KA6DHU found it using standard radio direction finding techniques.Everyone had missed it in binocular sweeps because the 1/2 inch cube-shapedtransmitter was covered in masking tape which is the same color as thesurface of the playa.

Pictures included here are by Andrew Chant KG6ZPE, Ian Kluft KO6YQ,Pat Power WB6RIC and Will Galloway AE6EY.