This year’s NYPower attendance was down, perhaps in part due to conflicting with NSL and to people saving up rocket time for LDRS in nearby Potter. Today was especially low key. Which was fine.
The clouds arrived. (Today was the one day of the weekend that’d had possible rain in the forecast, though by this morning it was down to “sprinkles after 4pm”.) Once again the morning wind was out of the south, but unlike the previous two days, it seemed to want to stay there.
I was pretty much down to my second string flights, the higher priority stuff having been done. I started off with the Razor on a B4-4. Countdown from five and nothing happened. “No continuity” they said and went on to other flights. “Range cold” I thought they said, and I went off to get a new igniter, and then they decided to try my rocket again! Good flight but I didn’t have the best view of it. I forgot to take a picture on the pad, so to make up for it I took one at the recovery point.
I was seeing way too many rockets come down in the wheat field, so I decided to wait and see if the wind would shift. I waited a lot. Finally just before noon with the flag flapping a little further toward the northeast, sometimes, I decided to prep the Test to Destruction with a C6-5. I figured I could stand it if it disappeared, and it’d save me the trouble of repainting the fin I replaced last fall.
The flight was good, though I failed yet again to get a good launch picture — someday I’ll break down and get a more suitable camera, maybe — and the wind carried it, yep, right into the wheat field. Another rocketeer found it, and another rocket of someone else’s. He remarked that he’d rather find his.
Sometime after lunch and a last shopping stop at AMW they launched someone’s MMX model, ⅛A impulse class, immediately followed by a reflight of Tom Cohen’s tube fin rocket, roughly 30,000 times higher impulse.
I packed up by about 1:30 and there were only two flights after that. At 2:00 it started raining… for about a minute or two. But by then I was on the way home.
It was a fine weekend. Very good field (except the wheat), good weather (except the wind toward the wheat), good people.
[I had MyTracks running all three days; based on that, I made a map.]
Rich's Rockets 