I Really Know How To Clear a Room...

Okay, so while Mom was making fried chicken for my birthday dinner, Dad was watching the honyocks so I could launch rockets with the club. Because I can't really keep Mo out of the other club members' stuff, prep my own rockets and learn from the beards in the club all at once.

So loaded up with eight rockets, two of which were two-stage designs I'd never flown, I head to Shawnee Mission Park.



And nobody is there.

I called my Dad and had him look up the club's site, and they were launching. At the Roosterville Airport, which I'd never heard of, up by Liberty. I don't know if I'd have trekked all the way up there to launch with them, but if I would have, I couldn't have at this point. Mom was frying chicken. I would have gotten to Roosterville and had almost enough time to turn around and drive back.



But as I drove into Shawnee Mission Park, I couldn't help but notice the flag wasn't moving. It was 65ºF, and no wind. And I was in the biggest field I know of with the possible exception of Lone Elm Park.

So I went ahead and launched. I wanted to see how these two-stagers performed, for one, because I have some parts for designs I've hatched that will involve staging, but I didn't want to build them until I found out more of what I probably don't know yet about staging.



Uneducationally, both two-stagers, Big Bird and Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, few beautifully.

The wind did pick up while I set up. But it fell away periodically. I weathercocked a bit, and put smaller engines in my rockets than I might have. To a fault, in fact. I put a 1/4A under Apollo XIII, and he ate dirt.



I had a couple of parachute malfunctions as well, but the rockets landed safely in the grass. And with eight launches, including two with two stages that got some real altitude, I didn't lose one rocket, which has to be a record.



I got my exercise in, too. Especially with Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. I'd debated about what to put above the C6-0 booster, and I thought I'd decided in the end on a B6-4. But my inner child apparently overrode that good judgment and put a C6-7 in instead.



The result was I almost died waiting for the parachute to open. Even wondered if I'd mistakenly put a C6-0 in as a upper stage, waiting for him to go ballistic and completely destruct on impact.

The parachute opened finally, and I went after him convinced he'd gone into a tree. I used that tree for a landmark as I went through elbow-high grass for at least a half mile.

It would have been more fun with the honyocks or the club, but it was at least a good walk spoiled.

You know, I've limited myself to a C motor maximum for budgetary reasons, but if I'm going to do two-stage designs, it's not really a thrifty thing: a D motor would be about the same as two C's, both price-wise and in terms of Newton seconds.



Still, staging is fun. The interruption you hear in the video is no glitch, that's the C6-0 burning out and the C6-7 air-starting. You can't hear it on the video, but the booster fluttered to earth audibly about twenty feet behind me.