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Saturday, April 4, 2020

Launch! Schoolyard Soccer Field, April 3, 2020

Yesterday I went out for a "Lone Wolf" launch. I arrived at the soccer filed about 7:30 a.m. This might be my last launch before the "Stay At Home" orders go into effect.
I thought the Orlando stay at home order was starting on Friday night. When I got back home I found out it started last night! Nobody questioned what I was doing, nobody was at the field.
I have certainly been staying at home anyway - only going out once a week to the grocery store.



Here's a slight upscale test of the Odd'l Rockets CORKSCREW with a Quest A6-4. This possible kit uses the heavy wall BT-20H tubing, with a 3" offset ring at the bottom.
You could easily see the spiral in the smoke trail as it "coned" to about 275'.

The rip stop nylon streamer brought it in with no damage.

An Estes A8-3 got the Estes GYROC in the air for it's 12th flight.
There was a slow turn during boost. It got a good estimated altitude of 300'.
Ejection, vanes flipped and it spun fast enough to slow the descent.





The Estes SUPER ALPHA was next up with an Estes B6-4.
The Super Alpha kit originally came with an Alpha style nose cone. Estes later changed it to a longer, rounded tip nose. This was an old balsa nose cone I carved and smoothed to the correct shape.

Altitude was estimated at 275' with recovery under a spill-holed Odd'l parachute.




Here's my best launch of the day -
The Excelsior HONEST GOON.

This is a perfect small field or demo flyer. It's bulky and a bit heavy so it won't get too high on the Estes B6-4, maybe 300'.








Here's the descent under a 12" Odd'l parachute. You can see how close I am to the housing development.


The one that never became a kit - I can't get these nose cones in bulk.
The Odd'l Goony F-16.
I used another Estes B6-4 to 300'. A ventral fin cracked along the root edge, an easy fix.







And the sixth launch of the morning -
A Quest VIPER with a noisy Quest Chinese A6-4.
300' altitude and recovery by a tie-dyed kite tail streamer.

Six up, six recovered. I did feel good to get out of the house, if just for an hour of rockets.

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