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It's amazing how the start of a new flying season seems to creep up on you and before you know it, there you are standing in the middle of a field again. I've been very apprehensive the week leading up to this launch; I really couldn't be bothered with it all and nearly didn't go. The choice was pottering around in the garden planting a load of alpines, or standing in a field watching rockets, luckily rockets won.
Due to the fact I was in two minds about going or not, I didn't even contemplate taking a rocket with me; I'm still not in financial happy land yet after last years unemployment. So I ended up RSO'ing the launch and taking a couple of rolls of film, which suited me fine. John Sim was first up with a couple of model flights, which also included the mandatory task for his UKRA Model Achievement Program Level 3. He was closely followed by Mike Roberts and one of his paper Tin Tin rockets, which was pretty cool. Steve Gibbings was up next and launched his Launch Pad Excocet on an Aerotech F, for probably it's best flight to date. It certainly didn't do any of the heat seeking horizontal fight profiles we're used to anyway.
It was then the turn of the boost gliders as both John Sim and Steve Gibbings had two excellent flights of their respective gliders. John's is just a small Quest Flat Cat glider, but did it stay airborne or what! After quite a lot of searching both parts of the glider were found with the glider over a kilometre away from the launch area. Steve's glider on the other hand is an Edmond's Ecee Thunder and is rather large. It's not at all heavy as it's made out of balsa and produced some excellent flights on Estes D12 motors. Steve's promised that next time he'll lob it on an F; that will be a flight not to miss. A few of the other's present decided to get in on the Smokey Sam action and launch these new motors. Personally I was a bit disappointed in the amount of smoke, I was expecting something similar to the Aerotech Black Jack. The smoke trail looks a lot thicker and blacker in the photos that I can remember it, so I'm not sure what's going on. Black smoke motors aren't really my thing, so I'm not sure if I'll be flying any. Gary Sinclair and Rod Stevenson obviously liked the idea of flying them, so they did. Gary launched his G60 rocket and Rod launched his PML Hydra, both for optimal flights. Gary also launched his G60 on one of the US market Pro38 motors, they G69, personally I prefer the orange flame and minimal smoke of these classic Pro motors.
The most memorable flight of the day was for all the wrong reasons; Paul Lavin flew one of his infamous tetrahedrons for what can only be described as a pant wetting flight. In retrospect it wasn't the greatest idea he's ever had to stick a Pro38 J360 into such a small tetrahedron, but sometimes these things work. That was pretty much about it for the launching and everything drifted off home. We had two vendors for this launch Pete's Rockets and Rocket's and Things, which was really fantastic. I hope that they both come back throughout the rest of the year to supply us with all our rocketry goodies.
Copyright © 1999-2007, Fatboab, all rights reserved.
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The weather forecast wasn't the best; we were supposed to get rainy showers in the afternoon and strong winds. In the end we didn't see any rain, and the wind died down towards the end of the day. By the time I headed home there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it had turned into a lovely crisp spring evening.
Damien Burrin was the first to get anything high powered off the ground and what a way to start the new EARS flying season than with the first Pro38 Smokey Sam launched in the UK. Damien must have been a bit excited as he hit the launch button before the countdown had finished and the rocket was instantly off the pad. If I hadn't be ready and waiting with the camera I wouldn't have got the shot, as it was I'm really impressed I got any shot at all!
Helen Green also managed to get a Hypertek flight in with her Higher Whopper rocket. The flight and recovery were optimal and the sound was fantastic. I've really go to fly some more of the Hypertek motors as they are real value for money considering the cost of the fuel grain. I think I might have to modify the design of one of my projects to cope with the extra motor length...