LAUNCH! Small Stuff Halloween, 10.31.10

I launched some small things at the soccer field this morning.

Perfect conditions - cool and no breeze at all.

The MMX downscale Missile Toe flew, landing just a few feet from the launcher.
The MMX Sky Writer had it's 12th flight. Perfectly straight boost as always.

My downscale MMX Break-Away would not ignite! I switched igniters and tried too many times. It'll wait for my old controller and another day.

The downscale carded Wolverine flew with an old MPC 1/2A3-5m engine. After the last flight, a little nose weight was added, but it's still coning a little at boost. It might have more to do with the model's size and the asymmetrical fin arrangement. Of course, this delay is too long, but safe deploy and recovery.

Here's a bad judgement on my part. I have way too many MPC 1/2A3-5m engines. All have performed well, I'm not blaming this mistake on the engine.

The carded Mercury Redstone boost was great! The five second delay was too long. I took a chance and the model nosed in. Ejection was very close to the ground and the tower hit the lawn. The tower is crumpled, the rest of the rocket is fine.

I'll print and make another capsule.

Look how close the Redstone landed! You can still see the smoke around the base of the launcher.

This is the first time I used a Quest controller and launcher.

While the launcher was fine, the handheld controller took too long to ignite the MMX engines. Yes, the 9V battery was new. For a while, I'll use the Quest launcher with my other Estes controller.