Launching a Sunset

Okay, so the flags were at half mast, I noticed, as I drove the girls home this evening. I wondered vaguely why this was. I didn't recall a head of state dying or whatever, but more than that, I noticed the flags weren't moving. Not even a token effort at flapping in the breeze.

If there was ever straight-up rocket weather, this was it.

The park we went to isn't exactly free of trees, but the adjacent Cathaholic Church and farms are. And what little movement the air held was in the direction of those unobstructed zones.



We started with Thor's Candycane, his umpteenth flight (he may have almost fifty flights in by now). His parachute almost didn't open, causing me to swallow a bug. I was pretty sure he'd land on pavement with nothing to break his fall. His parachute opened maybe ten feet off the ground, the closest of close calls.

I did notice Thor's paint has chipped into a distinctly happy face...



Em and the crowd wanted me to fly Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, my two-stager, but I turned out to be out of C6-0 motors.

Launched Mr. Creosote on an E9, the baddest black powder motor I can fly him on, and I was afraid we'd lost him. He went so high I lost sight of him, and when he came down, it looked like he was going beyond the railroad tracks, easily a half mile away. But he landed in the farmer's field a good football field short of the tracks.



Which gave me the confidence to send Stubby up on E power. He actually landed closer to the pad, and on a shorter delay.



Some of the kids on hand wanted to chase rockets. One of their Dad's started hollering at them not to, and I didn't want them getting in trouble. But it turned out, his reasons were he was worried they'd damage the rockets. He said something about it'd just take one of them falling on a rocket and breaking it.



I'm thinking, that doesn't sound likely. And model rockets are inexpensive, really, or I wouldn't be flying them. I hate losing them, I put time into designing and building them, but they get damaged and lost all the time. And I've never lost one to a kid falling on it after running to retrieve it.