Asa - October 27, 2007
After a long summer of waiting for the crops to be harvested, the HOTROC Fall/Winter season blasted off on Saturday, October 27th. Well, okay, the season actually started the weekend before, but since the winds were over 30 that whole weekend, I don't think anything flew. The 27th was a much nicer day; clear skies, warm temperatures, and winds 10 -15, gusting to 25 and ocassionally falling off to around 5 or less. So we took to the skies to celebrate the new season, and after sunset we continued flying and then checked out the new, bright comet through a large telescope. I didn't cover too many flights (I was prepping and grumping about the wind), but I got some great ones!
John Etgin from Houston flew "Shadow Technology" on an M1000. The rocket ended up in the power lines, but the wind blew it off before we got to it.
Dave McGuire flew a scratch built using his "everclear" EX propellant. The motor was rated as a 2400 ns K800. Perfect flight and recovery.
Tom Montemayor (me, on the right) flew his Bad Attitude on an Aerotech K695 Redline to 4695 feet. Another perfect flight and recovery.
Mark Simms flew his "Talking Head" scratch built using a sparky propellant. The rocket was stabilized (sort of) by 4 witches brooms. Minimum safe distance from this rocket was computed to be 12 miles. The flight was spectacular....the recovery was...well....the witch is dead!
Jim Parker had a MOST spectacular flight with his N Skidmark motor, launched at twilight. The motor and sparks just lit up the twilight sky. Yet another perfect flight and recovery.
Pillar of Fire.
Not much I can add to this shot. Yes, that's Mark.
There is a video for each of the flights I covered. The video is Windows Media format (.wmv) and they are all about 5 Mb in size.
This was Charlie Barnett's rocket powered by a K EX load. It was a perfect flight and recovery.