I would say it was a large crowd, biggest I've seen (compared to several XPRS's and a bunch of northern/central CA club events), not sure how it compares to other LDRS events since it was my first. Not everybody was there every day, Friday and Saturday were definitely the largest, many people had cleared out Saturday night. ROC had a bunch of pads set up with 3 banks each for HPR and away pads, all spaced enough that while one bank was flying the others could be loading (with a few exceptions for some more heads-up style flights). And sometimes launches were coming fast and furious, sometimes with the next flight being announced before the previous one had even reached apogee (made it a bit hard to watch or film). We never had to wait more than a few minutes to get to the RSO.
Got there Wednesday ~1:30pm, managed to get things set up before the "W" kicked-in the first day (~2:30-3 I think). Was hot, though as usual for dry CA heat it didn't feel as bad in the shade. In the evening got treated to a bunch of fireworks on the lakebed, we heard that it was a certification event for pyrotechnicians. Thursday the W came around the same time, ROC wisely decided to start an hour earlier (8am instead of 9 Thursday, and 7am instead of the scheduled 8 Friday/Saturday/Sunday) to get more flying time. The wind didn't die down until close to midnight, so the night launch was cancelled for that day. Friday about the same as Thursday, though the winds calmed around 8:30pm and there was a nice night launch that evening. Saturday the wind started much earlier (~11am) with a few dust devils blowing right through the camp (including one that blew right over the dumpsters and re-arranged some garbage
), but there were also some lulls unlike the other days. They announced another night launch after the banquet (~10pm) and the weather was okay (a bit breezy), but I think there was only like one flight that night (admittedly we were getting tired and may have missed some inside our RV). My ez-up was done in by the winds, through it was staked at every corner and strapped-down in every corner (two to the ground, two to the RV) 3 of the 4 legs were crimped at the top by the end, so it went in the dumpster on the way out. Have to pick up another one before XPRS.
Sunday morning was perfect, absolutely clear skies (most other mornings had wispy clouds, sometimes pretty low) and no wind. Not as hot either. Got two flights in Sunday morning before we packed up and started the trip back to San Jose (~7:20 thanks to traffic). A total of 7 HPR flights for my Dad and I (one Thursday, two Friday, two Saturday, two Sunday), we got each of our finished rockets in the air once (I brought an Osprey 75 that I was finishing in the RV, but wasn't totally done so it didn't fly), and successful flights for all but one, I had a main parachute fail to deploy on a DD flight, looks like my charge failed to shear one of the two pins, landed hard but didn't break anything other than my 3D printed nose-tracker sled and bent the eye-bolt in my avionics bay. My Dad did his first dual-deploy flight on a new rocket (during the Saturday afternoon gusts), everything went perfectly. Lots of other great flights to watch, I'll be spending the next several nights and probably a weekend or two going through all of my videos (and altimeter logs / GPS tracks) to get my album posted.
Many thanks to ROC for an excellent launch and banquet! We're both looking forward to the next west coast LDRS!
Our fleet, all but the orange one flew at LDRS 35.