Tripoli Vegas Oktoberfest

[fyrwrxz]

If I could, I'd call out each and every person there as brothers (and sisters!) in the smoke! I can't say "Thank You" enough to Las Vegas Tripoli for hosting this event. The weather forecast seemed to keep most of the crowd away, but what we had was awesome! A clear windless Night Launch on Saturday was the perfect cap to a day of flying with a few certs, a few cato's, and a few hard bounces (lake was too hard to stake!). The Saucer Drag Race of Death was hilarious as we had pad problems and entertained the crowd with a really extended version of a Drag Race that came across more like a Saucer Slalom. Timing is everything! Great fun and thanks to the guys who coughed up for an I55. I finally pancaked my old NCR Bomarc hanger queen when the nose chute got staked by the port pitot tube, preventing the main from coming out and inducing an upside down flat spin slowly to the playa. The nick name of the bird is "Future Crash Site", so it lived up to it's name. A MadCow version is waiting in the wings for SpringFest and maybe an F104, too. For the Sunday hard-core; incredible day! I didn't bring any high alt birds, but my mile high bird found a blue hole and recovered with a small zipper due to under-timed deployment on a 6 grain 29mm. Sunday was just awesome and we left as the last gasps for the weather window were closing in. Again, thanks to everyone that made this an excellent adventure, as always. No windows were harmed this time and shovels were not required.

 

[stealth6]

Got some pics to share.

Please note these were all taken by Dave Pacheco (not by me), and he has kindly sent them to me and allowed me to post them. He took lots of great pictures that weekend, and I'm sure others have benefited from his fine photography skills too. (thanks Dave!)

First up are three of my Punisher (Hanzalova Ugly) flying an AT I-327 Dark Matter motor. Note that the descent is under chute and not coming in ballistic this time around!


Next up are:
1) My scratch built 2-stager (Raspulescent) lifting off on a nice Loki H-144 White.
2) The absolutely beautiful SaturnV rocket that RocketJoe13 and Ed Dawson brought (note that I'm just a pad-slave in this pic, THEY deserve all the praise and gushing over this awesome rocket).
3) An amazing CATO shot of Mark's big Fatboy, experiencing a bit of duress. Note (what I believe is) the forward closure coming through the top of the nosecone!


s6