Article: 1597
By Keith Packard, November 2009

It’s the first anniversary of the Wilsonville model launches! We’ve been flying for a whole year now, and I want to thank OROC, and especially Robert Krausert and Tim Ryerse for their help in organizing and running these events.

The weather was unexpectedly nice; a high cloud layer, well above our launch ceiling, no wind and no rain made for a day with no lost rockets. There must be something about November and rocketry though — we had a good sized crowd at the park last weekend, and they flew a *lot* of rockets:

• Launches: 71
• Successful flights: 54
• Flyers: 18
• Rockets: 39
• Most Flights: 11 Gene G and 10 Sutton W
• Biggest Motor: E28-4 Keith P

Gene and Sutton just kept bringing rockets up to the LCO table and putting them up in the air. We had a rash of recovery failures this month, most of those were chutes that failed to unwad themselves after ejection. Looks like we could use a bit of education on the application of talc and some parachute folding tips.

We held a contest for the closest landing to the pitcher’s mound. I’m afraid I neglected to write down the name of the winner though; perhaps someone else remembers? In any case, the winning rocket landed *on* the mound, while several managed to land within a few paces. Low winds certainly make for short walks. Of course, Tim’s R2D2 got the ‘closest to the pad’ award when it failed to even get off the rod…

Thanks much to Tim Ryerse for coming out early to help set up, we’ll see you all next year in Wilsonville!