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Date: February 5, 2000
Location: Pawnee National Grasslands
Club: PHITS
A rockaholic can only go so long without a high-power fix. So even though the two regional Tripoli clubs only fly during the spring and summer months, there is another club that conducts waivered launches year-round. That club is PHITS of Northern Colorado. One of the cool things about PHITS is their launch site - they fly from a slab of concrete that is actually the top of an old Atlas missile site. This gives a nice, flat, fireproof surface to fly from even during the dry months.
My first flight of the day was the first flight of my converted Crayon bank rocket. I used an H242-s. The Crayon was fast and loud, a real attention-getter. The warped plywood fins gave the Crayon quite a bit of spin, not completely a bad thing with such a short, stubby, marginally-stable rocket like this one. The short delay was a good choice. Ejection was on time, and she landed by the road no more than a hundred yards away.
Next was the Big Daddy on another E15-7. This is a fun motor for the 'Daddy, even though the delay is a couple seconds too long. He landed just a few yards away from the pad with no damage.
My third flight was the Callisto on a G64-7. This was a fast, high flight and ejection was right on cue. She drifted a little bit north-west, and landed about 200 feet from the pad.
My last flight of the day was
the Goblin-4 on another
H128-M. This has turned out to be one of my favorite combinations. This
was another nice, pretty flight, with ejection just a little late. The
wind had picked up a bit and it carried the Goblin to the south pretty
quickly. She landed about 200 yards away, and when I got to her, I found
that she had busted a couple of fins from the hard landing. In addition
there was another small zipper in the tube from the late ejection. As
difficult as it is for me to do, I'm afraid I'm going to have to retire
her after 12 flights.
YTD Motor Count: C - 1; D - 1; E - 1; G - 2; H - 2