Article: 2342
By Keith Packard, September 2010

Wilsonville Memorial Park Launch Event September 12, 2010

What a beautiful day! Clear blue skys, calm winds and warm enough to wear shorts again. With the rescheduling of the OROC Sheridan launch weekend, I’m sure glad we decided to hold a model launch this weekend.

Even with limited notice about the launch, we had a good crowd. Sutton, Slone and Miles (and their parents) hadn’t heard about the launch, but decided to come to the park anyway. They were flying when I arrived to set up and joined us once we had our launch rods ready to load up. Sutton and Miles were first off the rod with two Swifts in a drag race, right at 2:00.

Our sound system wasn’t working this month; I’m blaming the mice in Steve’s garage where I left things stored since August. I’ll get that working before our next outing; I’m a bit hoarse after a whole afternoon of fabulous flying.

And the usual stats:

  • Launches: 85
  • Successful flights: 79
  • Flyers: 16
  • Rockets: 52
  • Most Flights: 17 Ethan
  • Biggest Motor: F42-8T Chris

Not a huge crowd, but a lot of flying went on in spite of that. Ethan (and his Dad) just kept loading motors and flying. Chris brought out a new airframe with a 38mm mount that he loaded up with the F42 and flew. It tilted over off the rod and ended up in a backyard just at the edge of the park. As he has already reported, it was recovered by the family who then came and flew more rockets.

We had a 4-way saucer drag race around 4:00, including Joe’s Frick-n-Frack and Tim’s Happy Face (an Art Applewhite design) which ended up colliding in mid-air. I’m afraid Joe’s airframe took more damage than Tim’s.

Chris also flew two different spools, one made from CDs. We also use CDs as blast deflectors, so you can see just how versatile this material is in rocketry.

Doug’s Quark landed in a tree, the only lost airframe for the whole day. However, we also recovered Ellie’s Tornado Torpedo out of a tree where it had been stuck since last month’s launch.

All in all, a most excellent launch and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. Thanks to the whole crew who stayed afterwards to help clean up — we were packed up and leaving within 5 minutes of the end of launch activities.

I’ll be out of town next month; if someone wants to sign up as RSO for next month, please let me know within the next week or so. Otherwise, I’ll give the park a call and let them know we’ll be skipping next month but will be back in November.

Remember that the annual OROC launch near Sheridan, Fillible’s Follies was rescheduled from this weekend to two weeks from now, September 25 and 26. Check out the OROC web site (http://www.oregonrocketry.com) for information about that launch.

Our last launch of the year in Wilsonville is scheduled for: November 14, Sunday 2pm to 5pm

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keith.packard@intel.com