LDRS started up yesterday and runs through Monday in Potter, NY, about an hour and a half west southwest of Syracuse. I decided not to register as a flyer. Partly that’s because I’m mainly a low/medium power guy, and while they do launch LPR at LDRS, my preference is to save my LPR flying for smaller-scale situations, like club launches; partly because I figured I could only go for a day or two, and there are no one-day fees, only full-festival registration. So I thought I’d just go there Saturday as a spectator. Saturday’s forecast is pretty grim, though: right now they’re saying 90% chance of rain during the day, 100% chance of heavy rain tomorrow night. Sunday’s forecast isn’t much better, and after Saturday, the field may be impassable Sunday anyway. So instead I went today. I can work on the weekend.
So what’s LDRS like? It’s a rocket launch, but big. With rockets, but (some of them) big. Or not so big but big motors. (Granted, there was at least one 1/2A flight.) There were a lot of flights that disappeared, at least to my eyes, before apogee. Apparently at least one LCO has better eyesight than I do, or a better sense of where to look, because he kept describing the flights of rockets I’d lost sight of. Anyway, I’ve never seen so many rockets I couldn’t see… if you know what I mean.
A lot of them were amazingly straight vertical flights, too.
And lots of vendors, also big: AMW taking up about three or four times as much ground as they did at NYPower or last year’s URRF, and Red Arrow, Wildman, Rocketarium, Performance Hobbies, LOC Precision, and others. I managed to keep my wallet closed other than for food, but only because I’d already pre-paid for two items:
Here are a few more photos:
Just a few of the tents.
Bullpup and Saturn V (not sure whose):
Lined up to fly:
I mentioned the Estes Goblin yesterday. Here’s an upscale:
Smoke and sparks (Bob Jablonski’s Polish Thunder on 3xI280): Are we having fun yet?
A few more pictures here.
Rich's Rockets 
