It's been a year since I was last at an EARS launch and even longer since I was at an EARS launch with anything to launch! As my wife is suffering a bit with morning sickness at the moment I decided to take the wee man with me, so she could get some piece and quiet. It's just shame that I'm out of practice with going to launches, so forgot half my stuff.

The first problem I faced was the fact that my laptop doesn't have a serial port, so I had no way of reconfiguring my RDAS. I'm pretty sure it's currently set to break-wire only mode as I last flew it on a Hypertek K240. My attempts to find someone at the launch with a suitable laptop with the RDAS software failed quite spectacularly.

Secondly I left the keys to the padlocks that are on my motor box at home. They are on my main house key ring and as I had my wife car, she keeps her house keys on the same ring, I left them behind. If I could only have found a laptop, I'd have used a, borrowed, hacksaw to have them off.

As it was I stood around chatting to folks and trying to keep the wee man from getting totally covered in muck. I'm not really sure he's ready for high power rocket launches yet, he balled his eyes out every time one went off. He did the same thing at UKRA 06 earlier in the year, so I think I might wait a bit before taking him again.

I wasn't intending to stay for the fireworks and with the wee man playing up, I'm glad I didn't. While we were driving home the sunset was amazing, I really wanted to pull over and take some photos, but that wouldn't have been a particularly good idea while on the A14. I managed to stop on the back road home and blasted a few shots off, very nice it was too.

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Last update: Monday, 06-Nov-2006 11:04:40 EST