Post-Fest report

Date: 2000-12-31 17:18:11

Slept for six hours. Woke up after two hours, wandered around, and went back to sleep for another four hours. Found the house mostly empty; Mom, Bethany, and Dad were off shopping or something like that. Willy, Humblik, and I walked down to the local park and launched three rockets and even managed to sucessfully recover them all. The first was a tiny rocket only ten centimeters tall. We lost visual contact soon after launch, saw the ejection charge at apogee, and then lost visual again. We wandered around in the direction we last saw it, executed a search pattern, and eventually Willy found it. Second up was a larger rocket; I functioned as videographer and maintained visual contact for its entire flight. Third up was a rocket featuring a helicopter recovery system. I maintained a visual lock for the entire flight as well, but it lost two of the three roters. I searched and eventually found one in someone's back yard. (They didn't have a fence, and it was only two meters from the bike path.) The mother of the house presently came out onto her deck and queried me as to what I was doing, looking around in the rough grass beyond the bike path behind her house. I presented the retrived rotor and she found another on the deck, out of my field of vision. The two recovered rotors will require work before the rocket can be launched again.