[Rockets] 09/12 Wilsonville Memorial Park Launch Report

[Keith Packard]

What a beautiful day! Clear blue skys, calm winds and warm enough to
wear shorts again. With the rescheduling of the OROC Sheridan launch
weekend, I'm sure glad we decided to hold a model launch this weekend.

Even with limited notice about the launch, we had a good crowd. Sutton,
Slone and Miles (and their parents) hadn't heard about the launch, but
decided to come to the park anyway. They were flying when I arrived to
set up and joined us once we had our launch rods ready to load
up. Sutton and Miles were first off the rod with two Swifts in a drag
race, right at 2:00.

Our sound system wasn't working this month; I'm blaming the mice in
Steve's garage where I left things stored since August. I'll get that
working before our next outing; I'm a bit hoarse after a whole afternoon
of fabulous flying.

And the usual stats:

   Launches:            85
   Successful flights:  79
   Flyers:              16
   Rockets:             52
   Most Flights:        17 Ethan
   Biggest Motor:       F42-8T Chris

Not a huge crowd, but a lot of flying went on in spite of that. Ethan
(and his Dad) just kept loading motors and flying. Chris brought out a
new airframe with a 38mm mount that he loaded up with the F42 and
flew. It tilted over off the rod and ended up in a backyard just at the
edge of the park. As he has already reported, it was recovered by the
family who then came and flew more rockets.

We had a 4-way saucer drag race around 4:00, including Joe's
Frick-n-Frack and Tim's Happy Face (an Art Applewhite design) which
ended up colliding in mid-air. I'm afraid Joe's airframe took more
damage than Tim's.

Chris also flew two different spools, one made from CDs. We also use CDs
as blast deflectors, so you can see just how versatile this material is
in rocketry.

Doug's Quark landed in a tree, the only lost airframe for the whole
day. However, we also recovered Ellie's Tornado Torpedo out of a tree
where it had been stuck since last month's launch.

All in all, a most excellent launch and I hope everyone had as much fun
as I did. Thanks to the whole crew who stayed afterwards to help clean
up -- we were packed up and leaving within 5 minutes of the end of
launch activities.

I'll be out of town next month; if someone wants to sign up as RSO for
next month, please let me know within the next week or so. Otherwise,
I'll give the park a call and let them know we'll be skipping next month
but will be back in November.

Remember that the annual OROC launch near Sheridan, Fillible's Follies
was rescheduled from this weekend to two weeks from now, September 25
and 26. Check out the OROC web site (http://www.oregonrocketry.com) for
information about that launch.

Our last launch of the year in Wilsonville is scheduled for:

 November 14, Sunday 2pm to 5pm

-- 
keith.packard at intel.com
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