The countdown was called and the button pressed, the spider igniter lit with satisfactory whoosh and puff of white smoke, and all 5 motors lit perfectly.
The lift off was fantastic, climbing slowly, dead straight, maybe 5 degrees of vertical, and with almost no spin. After approximately 2 seconds the core booster popped followed by the whoosh of the sustainer igniting. All 4 boosters peeled away simultaneously and the sustainer soared on up. At the staging event the sustainer tilted over however to maybe 40 degrees of vertical and now flew down range away from the pad. Due to the angle, apogee passed with approximately 2 seconds remaining on the delay, as she began to angle back down towards the ground I was gripped with fear and holding my breath. Thankfully, in the nick of time, the ejection charge fired and the main chute deployed to a huge sigh of relief. With the main stage touching down gently approximately 50 m down range of the pad.
All 4 boosters and the core stage were recovered with basically no damage. 1 of the mock nozzles was knocked loose, and the cord to retain the core booster to 1 of the side boosters was severed by one of the motors, however the booster tumbled harmlessly back to the ground. The main parachute was slightly singed by the ejection as was one of the booster streamers however the rocket was in fine shape to fly again with no repairs.
On the Sunday, we tried again for a second launch, however just as we padded up the weather took a turn for the worse, with the wind rising and rain incoming, I called off the attempt, opting to fly again when the weather is better.
Overall the weekend was brilliant, I was a little disappointed to not get a second attempt to launch, however that doesn’t detract from what was rely a perfect weekend and a fitting culmination of a lot of hard work.
To top it all of the Soyuz was voted the best down scale rocket, taking home the trophy!
I have got to give massive thanks to my brother and PieroAcme for the help on the build, to everyone on the day who helped me out with prep and padding up, and to the midland rocketry club here in the UK for the fantastic weekend of rocketry.