That said, the stack should have been on the away pads.
This rocket was on the away pads. XPRS had 4 "groups" of pads, about 10 model rocket pads up close (pads 1-10 I think), about 10 high-power pads at the normal HP distance (pads 21-30), and then about 5 away pads at a much farther distance (pads A-E, I had to go to or past these pads a few times to pick up rockets I flew from he HP pads and it was a good walk to these pads even from the HP). There was one way-away pad that had a triangular truss tower that some really large projects went up on, and a few people set up their own pads even farther away for special projects. But this flight went up on pad A, which was an away pad, but as the motor fragmented it came towards the far-east end of the flight line, thankfully those two pieces were either just past the flight line or between the first and second row of RVs (my RV was towards the east-end of the second row, so people from my group went running when the pieces came down to make sure our RV wasn't in trouble, I was watching these launches because my dad's rocket was on one of the HP pads waiting to do his L2 cert (unfortunately that turned out to be an AT J250 DMS motor CATO which nearly destroyed the insides of his rocket on the pad, we were able to re-build it and fly the next day for a successful L2). It was also announced as a heads-up flight, though personally I wish these all used 10-counts instead of 5-counts as to me that's also more of an attention-getter when you hear the longer countdown.
I managed to leave my best video camera at home for XPRS
, but for this rocket failure I had video from my older camera (lower zoom, harder to keep the target in-frame because of the screen size and brightness) as well as the away pads being within view of the pad camera I had set up at the HP pads for my dad's flight. Neither one had a great shot of the actual event however. Both videos are in the
XPRS album I just uploaded, a bit past the half-way point, the two videos immediately before the picture of the fractured J250W DMS motor casing.