Greetings fellow rocketeers,
My apologies for taking so long to get up a recap.
Saturday was a delightful launch day. We enjoyed great collaboration to make our time fun. Thanks again for all of the help setting up and tearing down. I'm grateful for all of the help and with the initiative to get our setup go well and quickly.
In terms of flights. We had quite a mixed day: Lots of good flights, some new models and first flights. We also encountered several challenges with flights. I couple of failures on motors. Gary finished his set of C11-3 motors to firm up the likelihood of a bad manufacturing lot. He also had a wayward LOC Graduator slowly lift off and wiggle quite a bit on a weak F-20. The Graduator still came down under parachute. Rich's High-flyer didn't go far up before it self-destructed. Finally, we had a larger rocket(Unity) fail under acceleration despite being built well. None of these caused any additional safety issues. Like other rocket vendors, our fliers seemed to capture data to help them do better in the future.
Though the winds caused our fliers to be conservative in choosing lower impulse power to fly, we still had several mid-power flights. One look at the numbers shows the heavy number of smaller motors and streamer flights. Still, the larger rockets flew well. We always pay attention to the wind conditions. So, just a few rockets did not make it back to the ground. One two stage flight, one cluster of 3 flight, along with lots of persistence to get those rockets with igniter problems off. We know it's frustrating to not get your rocket off the first time, but we're also proud of you to work through the issues to make them fly.
That's what we're all about. Failure is only a step to better success. Way to go!
And Yes, Marvin the Martian flew safely in "Kaboom Q-36" on a D12-5 courtesy of Alex. As one who watched the cartoon as a kid, it was quite fun to see him once again in a clear payload bay. Roger brought out his new creation "Puppy" and flew the rocket dog twice. Our "biggest" small rocket of the day was Chris's Honest John.--only 4.5" tall and screaming off the pad on an MMX motor! Having Ted Moo's daughter and granddaughter in attendance flying some of his rockets in memory him was a special part of the day. What a joy and honor to remember him this way.
If you can't tell by now, we had a great time being together, flying together, working together and being a team to pull off a great launch. I am thrilled to see this on behalf of the 4 year old button pushers and the senior members still passing on the experience of watching rockets fly.