Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Spreading Ashes...Honeywell Style

Ok, I promised this story a long time ago and now I'm going to tell it.

While teaching at Ardmore in Bellevue, my dad was in charge of the model rocketry program. He had this massive control board that he took to launches, it had dials and switches on it that allowed the students to set-up ten or twelve rockets and then each take their turns launching them. This way you didn't have to wait between each launch. It was a pretty neat set-up, but I digress. The launch pad has nothing to do with this story, I just wanted to tell you about it.

I think that he did the model rockets thing based on his experience in the artillery and rocket battalions in the Army. Again with the tangents, this point also has very little to do with the story at hand.

When my dad passed away in June, we buried the lion's share of his ashes at the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent. We kept a portion of the ashes to spread on Lopez Island and, if one of us ever climbs it, the summit of Mount Fuji.

In early August we gathered for our annual camping trip at Lopez. Or as some have called it, The Honeywells Take Over of Odlin Park. When Scott was on the island the weekend after dad passed, he happened to find an Estes Rocket at the aptly named Lopez Island Pharmacy. It was my dad's favorite model, the Big Bertha, and it was also the only one they had. Scott and Lori built and painted the rocket, complete with dad's name and rank on the side. See the picture of it in the first September post.

On the first Saturday night at Odlin, we all gathered on the baseball field for a memorial and rocket launching. All 35 people from our group, plus a large number of the other campers, gathered around to watch. We had an assortment of engines that we got from one of dad's old students, so that we could make the best showing possible. Scott and Dave were the launch captains, for lack of a better term, and they selected the right engines, packed the parachute, and set up the launch pad. We said a few words, did a big old countdown, pushed the button and the rocket shot off the pad.

Now what is supposed to happen, for the uninitiated, is that the rocket should shoot up to around 100 feet, the nose cone pops off, and then the rocket floats gently to Earth to be launched again.

That's not what happened.

The rocket shot up to about 100 feet, the nose cone did NOT pop off, and the rocket took a ballistic trajectory right back to the launch pad. Nearly hitting more than a few Honeywells in the process.

It was immediately decided that two things were wrong. One, the nose cone was too tightly packed into the rocket body. Two, we didn't use a big enough engine. So we repacked the nose cone, putting it only about 1/2 way into the rocket, and we got an engine with a bigger discharge to really POP the nose cone off.

The only difference between the two flights was about 25 feet in elevation and the fact that nose cone popped off. This time the parachute drug the rocket back to Earth in a big hurry. Oh, and it still almost hit some of the Honeywell's.

So we went back to the drawing board, again.

Now you may be asking yourself, 'Where are the ashes in all of this?', and that is an excellent question. For the first two launches the ashes were packed deep into the crown of the parachute. On the first launch this was of little consequence as the para chute never came out. On the second launch however, we realized that the ashes were too heavy and the parachute couldn't open. There was also the fact that they acted as an anchor and drug the rocket down fairly quickly.

For the third launch we repacked the chute without the ashes inside it. Rather we put them on top of the chute, right under the nose cone.

We did the big countdown again, the rocket lifted off beautifully, the nose cone and chute came out perfectly, and Stan Honeywell's ashes were spread over Odlin Park on Lopez Island from an altitude of 200 feet.

It was perfect.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Surreality



Scott & Lori sent us this picture the other day...I stared at it for 45 minutes when I took it out of the envelope...I am still waiting for it to seem real to me...