Diego Area Rocketry Team (DART) July 31 2022 Launch: My flights

[smstachwick]

After a bit of a crazy off-season, I returned to my home field at the end of last month. Attendance was high, and my excitement was also high.

My first flight was the Wanderer 2.0 on a C11-3. The FlightSketch Mini returned an apogee of 181 ft after a beautiful boost, coast, and ejection. Sadly the parachute failed to come out of the nose and the stubbly little rocket suffered a cracked fin on impact. Oh well.



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I also flew my girlfriend’s Yankee Doodle rocket, with her blessing, on an A8-5…

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and my Star Orbiter on an AeroTech E16-4W.

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Both airframes recovered successfully. I think I got lucky with the Star Orbiter though, it weathercocked a bit and thus the short delay put it a bit closer to apogee than it would have been otherwise.

Angelica Killion snapped this incredible liftoff photo on DART’s FaceBook page, it’s too good for me to not share here.



I also showed @1904 hank how AeroTech reloads go together using my E16-7W reload in one of his hardware sets, which he flew in his own Star Orbiter. Sadly that suffered a nose detachment, although we did recover the body tube, the important bit.

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That was it! The day was filled with all kinds of chatter, visiting with other attendees including @fyrwrxz (a genuine pleasure as always), and lots of spectacular flights.

 

[gdjsky01]

I;ve never gone to F.I. Too afraid everything would land in the water. Great pics. Your videos show why I don't do video. Tiny images. Whereas the photo shows why I do photos.

Thank you for the report!

 

[smstachwick]

I;ve never gone to F.I. Too afraid everything would land in the water. Great pics. Your videos show why I don't do video. Tiny images. Whereas the photo shows why I do photos.

Thank you for the report!

Ha! I try to have a mix. Some posts skew one way or the other.

Fiesta Island has a 1000 ft ceiling set by agreement with the FAA. If you stay under that you should be fine in mostly calm conditions. I often find myself shooting for progressively shorter flight times as the day goes on and the wind picks up.