What a fantastic day of rocketry we had today with non-stop flying from the 8 AM start until almost 1 PM! Our launch count was well above par for a non-advertised event with 52 flights in total. We had a fantastic array of beautifully designed and finished low powered rockets that outnumbered high powered flights by three to one. Motor ranges for the day were: 3 x A, 12 x B, 18 x C, 4 x D, 2 x F, 4 x G, 6 x H, 2 x I and 1 x H2O.

Two of the 19 high powered flights for the day belonged to Robbie Newton and Brad Thompson both of whom successfully certified in L1 HPR. Robbie Flew his “X-Calibur” on a H125 to 3500’ and Brad flew his “Callisto” on a H90 to 2100’. Congratulations Robbie and Brad!

Very lucky birthday girl Havana was surprised to have everyone present sing her happy birthday before a scratch built rocket shaped like a giant candle was launched. To add to the surprise the rocket deployed a six-meter long rainbow streamer for recovery.

The title of the most prolific flyer for the day was seized from Mark O’Donoghue (with 6 flights) by almost double with a mammoth effort of 13 flights from Aidan Clarke. Mackenzie Bradford followed closely behind Mark with 5 launches.

Rob Newton launched his “Small Endeavour” on an I800 Vmax which could have almost been mistaken for a small explosion rather than a rocket launch with motor burnout after just 0.52 of a second! The rocket once again became visible after an event at apogee and was recovered safely.

Glen Magarry joined the rebel alliance and launched his X-Wing on a C6-3 to 1000’ (You’ve started something Mat!)

Another fantastic rocket was Warren's amazing "Skyburst" that carried a special payload of six ping pong balls to apogee where they were deployed and individually recovered on multicolored streamers. A very interesting idea Warren and well done.

Cran Middlecoat joined us again with a fantastic water rocket constructed from PET drink bottles and 3D printed components designed to loft an egg within the nose cone. Cran’s son Andy also brought along his RC plane and treated us to some fantastic flight and stunts as we packed up for the day.

Thanks to all who came along to fly and thanks to members that helped with setup and pack up.

See you all next month!

A light breeze that rather rapidly became a respectable wind didn’t deter our handful of members that came to fly and we even got over our average launch count with 53 flights, 10 of which were water rockets! Thank you to Cran and Sarah from “It’s Rocket Science Adventures” for bringing out and setting up your water rockets for the kids to launch and learn (it didn’t take long for the big kids to start playing with them either leading to a water rocket drag race!)

We also had some Aerospace Studies students come along from Mueller College with their teacher to launch the rockets they had built. They were all keen to learn and asked many of our members questions. Thanks Mueller College for coming along and we hope to see you again next time.

Alex Helbig wasn’t about to let a ‘little breeze’ stop him from tickling some air space, flying his “Rainbow Warrior” to 2,400’ on a H120 Red Lightning for a successful Level 1 certification flight. Well done Alex and congratulations!

Aidan flew one of the more unique rockets of the day named “Break Away”, being a beautifully detailed 890mm long rocket that breaks into 6 tethered sections at apogee and tumbles its way back to the ground like a Chinese dragon. Each section is painted a different colour to form a rainbow coloured rocket on the pad.

Lachlan flew another of the unique rockets for the day that is a non-conventional design with one large conical ‘fin’ and a cluster of four motors mounted two thirds of the way up the airframe on a canter rather than at the base.

Today’s launch also marked two special occasions: the first being QRS signing on its 200th member and the second belonged to Warren McKay who had his 100th flight with QRS. To celebrate the occasion Warren replicated his Level 1 certification flight launching the same rocket “Tethys” with the same motor (an H125 classic) for a picture perfect ‘re-certification’. Congratulations Warren and QRS!

See you all at the next launch!