When I woke up it was clear blue skies and no wind and after hearing the forecast from then night before I was quite surprised. By the time I'd packed the car and got to Elsworth to put up the signs, the weather was still behaving its self. In the time it took me to put up the signs and get to the actual launch area the wind had picked up to a steady 10 miles an hour, gusting up towards 15-20 miles an hour. Not an ideal speed for launching rockets.

Even thought the sun was out it wasn't warm and as per usual, no one was really preparing anything to fly as they all wanted to see if the wind would drop. Since the forecast had been for the winds to increase throughout the day, I was trying to get people to launch stuff as early as they could.

Paul Shackleton had won a PML Tiny Pterodactyl at K-Lob and had built it especially to fly at this EARS launch. The kit is essentially just a tiny version of the bigger PML Pterodactyl kits and looks great. I'm not sure what size of chute Paul had in it, but after the perfect boost on an Aerotech G35 it just drifted into the distance.

Paul went off to look for it and was helped by Roy Trzeciak-Hicks who was out in the same direction recovering young Tom's VB ASP, which had flown on an Estes D12. They spent quite a time looking for it, but came back empty handed. Update 3rd November: I have just received to rockets from the farmer, one of which was Paul's Tiny Pterodactyl, it's in perfect nick as well.

Next to launch was Warren Stamp and his newly repairs Estes Skywinder rocket. Warren had flown this at the last EARS launch, but the nose cone had come away when the ejection charged fired. This time the same thing happened, even though Warren's dad, Duncan, had glued it on with different glue. Also due to the wind it didn't really helicopter in, which was a shame.

Even though the weather was deteriorating, we had a new member job, Mike Roberts came along and flew his Estes Wizzard on an Estes A8 motor a couple of times. The only other person to fly anything was Damien Burrin, with his Optically Challenged rocket that contains a digital camera. The rocket took off and went practically horizontal into the wind, evidently the camera worked as expected and returned some good shots.

So in total there were only seven flights, with a total of 228.5Ns burned, that's an average of 32.6Ns per flight. We ended up shutting the range down due to the increased wind, which had picked up to 15 mph and was gusting over 20 mph on a regular basis. Instead of going home, as it was only about 2 o'clock, a few hardy souls headed off into Cambridge and spent the next few hours talking rockets in a pub.

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Last update: Tuesday, 30-Mar-2004 03:43:36 EST