Stratofox participates in AeroPac's To100K, September 2005

There was also an experimental launch day at XPRS on Monday, September 26.But Stratofox wasn't there because we had moved about 10 miles up the playato help set up for the Paragon Astronautics space rocket launch.

The weather on Friday, September 24 turned bad as a storm system took allafternoon to move through the area. The thunderstorm dropped a lot ofrain, and one person said they thought they saw a small tornado, thoughheavy rain could look like that. The 30K test launch of To100K waspostponed to Saturday.

Owen DeLong KB6MER (member of both Stratofox and To100K) coordinated thesearch via radio from the To100K mission control center. He ran what Hamscall a "directed net", where he coordinated radio traffic in an orderlymanner on what could otherwise have been a congested frequency with allthe people on it.

Like in August, the To100K booster worked flawlessly. The Stratofox teamwho was assigned to it was two AeroPac members recruited at the launch,Scott Bowman as driver and 15-year-old Zach Adams K7ZBA on the radio.(Zach successfully did his Level 1 certification flight on Friday morningbefore the weather got bad.)They located the booster, turned it over to To100K team members to safe it,and then joined in on the search for the sustainer.

There were no post-flight radio signals from the sustainer so this wasstrictly a visual search.

Initially, Stratofox members Ian Kluft KO6YQ and Ben Woodard KG6FNKdrove for the ground search. But later they went back to get Ben's plane.

A third search team was Ed Hackett W7EDH and Ed Conger KD6ANO. ButEd Hackett had to leave on Friday when the weather got bad. So onSaturday, Benjy Levy drove and Ed Conger was on the radio.

Ken Biba KG6DLV and Paul Hopkins KE6DAX of the To100K team each participatedin the search as well. Owen assigned them Stratofox tactical callsigns.So if you were listening on the radio, it all sounded like Stratofox. Butwe actually had an integrated search that included To100K team members.

Stratofox has often prepared to do aerial searches for rockets on the playa.Finally we got to do it. The plane is a Mooney M20C that belongs to Ben.As it turned out, the sustainer made only a body-diameter hole as it wentunderground, which could never have been seen from the plane. But they didfind someone else's rocket, the Orange Crush, 4 miles west of the launchsite. For a moment they thought it was To100K. All of us called thatgood practice anyway.

Credit for the find went to Steve Wigfield and Paul Hopkins. The successfultechnique was to compare reports from eyewitness (Steve Wigfield and AlanLarkin) who saw the dust cloud from the impact. The important info waswhere they were, what direction it was and terrain they saw behind it.Unlike in the general public, eyewitnesses at AeroPAC are apparently quitereliable because it was *exactly* where the lines intersected.

Unfortunately, dust clouds mean a shovel recovery. So AeroPAC's goal ofsetting a 100K HPR altitude record together as a club will have to waituntil next year.