Well, last weekend I finally got out to completing my L1 Cert flight with my Apogee Katana at the Stealey Memorial Launch Site at Hudson Ranch as part of the S.C.O.R.E. October 21 Odd Rocket Launch! Woot woot! Gosh there were alot of rocketeer out there -- including TVM. Yes, it was great that Tim was there -- as I pinged him a couple of times for his thoughts -- but it was also a bit nerve wracking using Tim's rocket for my cert flight with his watchful eyes right there! Anyways, the flight did not go entirely as planned, despite all of my pre-planning. I had not looked at my supplies in a while, so while I thought that I had loaded everything into my truck that I needed for my launch -- the Katana was set up as a two stage but I was only launching as a one stager -- somehow I did not have the correct 54mm motor. The concensus was that what I had -- an H135W-14A -- was not going to be appropriate. So, I took out the electronics bay -- shortening the rocket by a good 18 inches -- and prepared to launch just the shorter, single stage. But as the Katana was set up for the 54mm motor, I needed a motor adapter (actually, a couple) to get from the 54mm to 29mm to use the motor that I had, which were graciously provided by ModelRocketGuy (Jesse) -- a real life saver! Juan Cedillo did the actual certification, and he was fantastic! Juan walked through the entire model, asked me a lot of great questions, and then was there at the pad when it was time to get it ready for launch. The launch was uneventful, my wife and I collected the rocket from the field, Juan inspected and provided my final certification and it was a wrap! I had brought a couple of other rockets with me to launch, but given how long it took me to get the Katana ready to go and up in the air, I decided to save them -- well actually, my wife decided to save them -- for another day. I will post up a video here shortly.
thanks for the picture
