Date: September 18, 1999

Location: Bear Creek Lake Park, Denver CO

Club: CRASH

Another great day for flying rockets. I was scheduled to volunteer to help out at the "Make It-Take It" booth at the Aurora Street Fair in the afternoon, so I tried to arrive early so I could get in a couple of flights before I had to leave. I also had a few friends show up to the launch to watch my flights.

My first flight was the Goblin-4 on another G64-4 for her eighth flight. After learning my lesson the hard way a while back, I only use the four second delay in the Goblin. Boost was fast and straight and noisy, and she received a nice cheer from the crowd. She arced slightly to the North and floated up there for a couple seconds before ejection. She floated down and landed about 150 yards away, right at the edge of the road. Steve and Shannon and I walked over and retrieved her.

I emptied the casing and dropped it into my bottle of vinegar to soak while I watched other rockets and chatted a bit with everyone. After thoroughly cleaning out the casing, I prepped another G64-4 for the Javelin's sixth flight. The last time I flew her was back in Hartsel on June 26. I thought it would be neat to fly two different rockets on the same motor to compare the flight characteristics. I told everyone that the Javelin would zip off the pad compared with the Goblin, and go much higher. Well, that was mostly true. The four-second delay turned out to be slightly too short for such a light rocket, and ejection occurred a bit before apogee. Still she probably got a good 1500 feet out of that G64. She landed about half-way up the hill to the North, in about the same place my Initiator landed a while back. Steve and Shannon accompanied me again, which was nice because I had a hard time spotting it in the tall grass/weeds on the hillside.

I was a bit puzzled about the early ejection with the four-second delay. I used the exact same motor in her at Hartsel in June, and the four-second delay was perfect. I didn't think the difference in altitude (approx. 5400 ft. at Bear Creek compared with 8800 ft. at Hartsel) would affect the Javelin that much. But next time, I'll try a seven-second delay at Bear Creek and see how that goes...

I was hoping to get in a flight of the Big Daddy on an E15, but I was already late enough for the "Make It-Take It" booth, so the Big Daddy would have to wait.

By the way, the "Make It-Take It" booth was a lot of fun, if a bit slow. In case you've never heard of such a thing before, this is a booth where kids can come up, pay a buck, and we show them how to build a rocket. In this case, we built Gnomes, which takes all of maybe five minutes to build when you've got a bunch of kids and you're cranking them out. If you ever have this type of event in your area, I recommend trying it once, if only for the satisfaction that you have helped a kid get started in rocketry.

YTD Motor Count: 1/2A - 2; A - 3; B - 4; C - 7; D - 8; E - 4; F - 7; G - 11; H - 7