I first attended the annual UKRA event in 1998 when it was still at Garlands Shooting Ground near Tamworth. This year was my seventh year of attending UKRA events, how time flies when you're having fun. Due to complications at work that I won't go into I didn't manage to leave until Friday morning around 09.30, so I didn't get to Heckington until around 11.00.

As per usual I hadn't missed anything as the weather wasn't the greatest with low cloud and high winds. So I grabbed a spare table and then went off to find a quiet corner to pitch my tent. After getting all my stuff setup and ready to go I popped into Pete's shop to see what was what.

Last June I paid for a GWiz LC Deluxe 400 on the assumption that he'd have them in stock again soon. It had nearly been a year since I paid for it, but he's never got them in again, so I decided to cash it in for motors instead. So I picked up two Pro38 I205's, two Pro38 I185's and a few igniters for the altimeter flights I was planning.

After popping into Pete's I set about prepping Electric Blue so that if the weather did improve I'd be able to fly it at a moments notice. The weather tends to improve into the evening at Pete's Farm, so it's always worth having something ready to go in case the conditions improve.

I'd decided to trade in the GWiz for motors if Pete didn't have any a couple of days before the event. This would then allow me to test fly the static tube altimeter nose cone a couple of times on 3 grain Pro38's before committing the altimeter to it for a further couple of flights on four grain Pro38's. I'd also bought some aluminium tubing for a local hardware shop on the way up, so it wouldn't take long to get everything ready.

The first flight wasn't going to have a static tube, as it was going to just test the recovery attachment points. The second flight would contain a static tube and then the third and fourth the altimeter as well. The prep of the rocket was pretty easy as the rocket was designed to go together very easily. However, I didn't know what delay to set the motor to and didn't have the new 62.5g Pro38 motor files on my laptop.

After half an hour of faffing around trying to find a floppy disk and then trying to get infra-red ports to work, I ended up copying the necessary motors by hand. After running a few simulations I knew what delays to set so I finished all the preparation and was ready to go. Shame the weather hadn't improved any.

I decided that there was no point getting launch fever as there was still two days to go, so I decided not to fly until the Saturday. So with a bit of free time on my hands before we all went out for a curry I decided to make a couple of static tubes. After making the static tubes, which was pretty easy I decided to start reading the Hypertek instructions as I wanted to fly a couple of my Hypertek motors on the Sunday.

All too soon it was time to depart to The Agra for a curry, so I left the Hypertek instructions and headed off with the rest of the MARS crew. The curry was interesting as I told them the Aloo Madras wasn't hot enough last time I'd had it, so when it was served it had loads of chopped green chilli on top of it; this wasn't going to be a mild curry. My suspicions about the curry were well founded as it was blistering hot, it was just a shame some of the potato wasn't cooked all the way through; maybe they'll get it right next time.

After the curry it was back to the launch site for a few beers and a bit of idle chatter. I decided not to try and start reading the Hypertek instructions again and leave those until the morning. I finally stumbled off to bed at around 02.00 leaving a few people in a far worse state than me; I blame all that Polish cherry vodka.

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Last update: Wednesday, 09-Jun-2004 13:43:12 EDT