Vandenburg AFB

From Boy Scouts Va...

Joey and I went with the scouts to Vandenburg AFB this weekend and had a really great time.

We arrived at our camp site at about 9pm and got our tents up just before the rain started. It rained most of the night. I stayed dry, but unfortunately Joe was stuck with the puddle side of his tent and got wet.

We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and started launching rockets in the adjacent softball field. Our scoutmaster Bill had built a slick multi launch contraption that would allow us to set up 6 rockets at once, and then let the boys launch them sequentially. The boys would go up to this big black box, turn a key and wait for the ready light to come on, then press a big hand held thumb button to launch the rocket. They loved it.

The day started off will little wind and no rain, but by the time we stopped with was quite windy, and the rain had started coming down hard. I was tormented with weather I should launch my fancy camera rocket for fear of losing it. I finally gave in a launched it (scroll up a bit for the video). It was windy, and since the smaller rockets were getting blown around a lot during ascent, I had my launcher angled. But my larger, heavier rocket wasn't affected by wind nearly as much, and so I had over compensated. It flew a long way at a relatively low angle. Then, when the parachute deployed, the band that connected the nose cone and parachute to the rocket body snapped and the body fell to earth. Some of the boys found it in the middle of a small wooded thicket. I found the nose cone and parachute up in a tree.

Joey got two launches with his rocket. I gave away the three extra I had brought to 2 webelos who had none, and one scout who forgot his. My smallest one I launched with the largest motor that would fit. It flew horribly (due to it's design, and not my construction). It was last seen flying horizontally towards a wooded area. I didn't bother chasing it.

After lunch, we went on a 5 hour driving tour of the air force base, and saw a couple of the historical locations (WWII training area, place where 7 destroyers ran aground), and a bunch of the Space Launch Center (SLC's). Most interesting was SLC-6 (pictured above) that was built to accommodate Space Shuttle launches, though none ever too place.

We were scheduled to go bowling on base after the tour, but it ran long and we missed our opportunity. So, we had a nice dinner and camp fire and went to bed just before it started raining... again. It poured for a good portion of the night.

We all stayed mostly dry and woke up early and drove home.

We were joined on this trip by my friend Brent and just older kid Robby. It was really great to have them with us.