Article: 2132
By Keith Packard April 2010

Wilsonville Memorial Park Launch Event April 11th, 2010

Wow. That’s about all I can say after spending an hour entering flight data this evening:

• Launches: 114
• Successful flights: 98
• Flyers: 54
• Rockets: 71
• Most Flights: 9 Ed McBride
• Biggest Motor: F40 Ian Welsh

We counted 79 people at the launch, and at one point we were stacked up three racks deep. If this size crowd shows up again, we’re gonna need more rods.

The weather was favorable with light winds and a cloud deck plenty high for this field. The wind was from the north, which isn’t ideal as we use the southern ball fields. Tilting the rods towards the north helped keep more rockets out of the trees, but we lost a few even still. Lower flights and smaller chutes (or streamers) were the rule of the day.

Chris G brought his church youth group to fly several models. And then, about an hour after we opened up, a cub scout troop showed up with more Alpha’s than I’ve ever seen in one place. They brought a pack of Quest A6-4 motors and I have to say that these were a lot of fun — slowly coming up to pressure, they sounded like a much bigger motor. And, none of the A6-4 flights ended up in the trees.

Austin T flew a fabulous spider-shaped saucer and the USS Enterprise. Steve Tarr helped aerate the lawn with his Acme Spitfire. Emily K came out with a hot-pink rocket she called ‘Pink Panther’. Ed McBride and Steve Tarr both flew gliders, and neither of them got stuck in the trees. Finally, Tim Ryerse closed out the show with the first flight of his Frick-n-Frack I didn’t get the cub scout troop number written down, but congrats to them for many successful flights, and I hope they’ll be back.

Thanks to Ed McBride for helping get things set up, and of course to everyone who stayed afterwards to help carry stuff back to the cars.

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keith.packard@intel.com