This launch wasn't an official EARS launch as we'd planned to start the flying season a couple of weeks later on the 4th of March. As it turned out we should have made it an official launch as the outbreak of foot & mouth came a week later and stopped us flying for two months. The reason we had the launch was so that MARS could test an electronic payload they had before it flight in their Phobos 4 altitude vehicle.

From talking with a couple of the MARS guys there was just going to be a few of them, Pete Davy to supply the motors and myself. When I got there, there was a Discovery Channel film crew as well, which was quite entertaining. As per usual, the MARS crew turned up over time after mobile phone calls to give them directions even though they'd been to the launch site before.

So we eventually got down to some flying and it turned out to be one of the best wee launches that everyone had been to. The reason for this was there was no one else there to distract everyone, so we could get on with preparing our rockets and motors, even Pete got to fly something! Having said that usual standing around chatting meant that the final couple of flights were made after the sun had set.

There were quite a few flight early on as a few folks still had prepped rockets and motors from Brass Balls a couple of weeks before. Since that launch had basically been blown out with bad weather everyone really wanted to burn some AP. In total there were 16 flights made at an average of 402 Ns per flight with Stephen Woolhead flying the most motors. He flew his PML AMRAAM 4 on each of the 38/600 reloads, which was quite impressive.

Highlights included Pete's PML Patriot on a K550, Marcus Lauder's GPO on an I284 that ripped off the pad like you wouldn't believe. Chris Eilbeck flew the MARS payload in his ADR-2 on a H180 for a cracking wee flight and the video transmitted back was quite impressive. One of the best flights of the day had to be Gone Blitzing which was a hybrid rocket made up from one of Ben's and one of Richard's on a I161. IT wasn't so much the flight as the sunset, which was simply awesome.

All in all this was a great wee launch that helped stem the AP cravings while the foot and mouth outbreak raged for the following two months. I flew two rockets on Blue Thunder H's and recovered them both, which was quite nice. I also managed to get photos of them for a change by getting someone else to press the button.

• View all the photos here.

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Last update: Tuesday, 30-Mar-2004 03:42:56 EST