Cloudy conditions greeted the small crowd of hardy but enthusiastic members to the Christmas themed December launch day which included a number of Christmas rockets being flight. The weather held out all morning and proved to be good conditions for flying rockets.
Although the first launch didn’t occur until well after 8 am the crowd built throughout the day with a final launch tally of 29 flights on motors ranging from A through to K. There were a number of Christmas themed flights including the Santa Express from Patrick, Tinsel Sharky from Jeff and Christmas Angel Flight from Warren. We were also treated to a number of impressive flights of Jeremy's water rockets throughout the course of morning.
First cab off the rank for the day was Matt flying a "Christmas Tree" rocket on a G185 motor complete with fairy lights and tinsel. To quote Ari: "It took a left turn at Albuquerque" after take off...
Trial members Kailyn and Ciara successfully flew their first ever rockets: Blizzard and Bumblebee on B6 motors. We welcomed back Adam after a brief absence as he successfully flew his Callisto on a G131 to 1500 feet and his impressive “Air Commander” two stage rocket on D12-0 / D12-7 motors to 2000 feet. Zigby and Oliver had successful flights of their proven Ballistic Chicken and TARDIS rockets respectively.
Most interesting rockets for the day were Andrew's scratch built ACME rocket and Patrick's Vostok. It was also great to see a Fly-it / Take-it rocket return and being flown by Jaxon and Tyler on an A8 motor. Really cool flight of the day was won by Ivan flying his “Level 2” on a K530 which unfortunately experienced a separation event at 1000 ft. The rocket was recovered intact and will fly again soon.
We had two successful L1 attempts on the day: Garth, Luke and Matthew showing great patience to wait for perfect wind conditions to launch their Callisto on an H255 motor after a successful first flight on a G106 and Riley successfully launched his TRUBLUE to 2400 feet on an H123 motor.
A big thank you to Petar and Matt for running the greatly appreciated post launch sausage sizzle.
Looking forward to seeing everyone again at the January Launch.