This is probably a bad idea, posting up at 3 am, but I’ve been laying awake for two hours going back over what has to have been my most eventful day at a rocket launch I have ever had. And I didn’t even launch a rocket.
I wish I had the computer skills to link my video of Wildman and Jason mud skiing, but the file is 134 Mb and beyond my ability to load.
It rained Friday night, and most of Saturday morning, creating a muddy path for all the folks that showed up. Not to be deterred by this, Jason tied a folding table to Wildman’s quad, and Tim drug him back and forth across the rocket pasture.
Some of you that know Sharon and I would be shocked to hear that we spent a day at a launch and didn’t fly something. Instead we walked the vendor rows and shopped, which is also something we enjoy doing. I’m not gonna list all the goodies we picked up, but do want to relate some observations I made.
Teddy (onebadhawk) has a new rig. Although I regret that he has gone to the dark side and abandoned his GMC, his ram powered ice cream truck is AWESOME! I could go on to describe all the cool features of his custom made rig, but the one thing that really amazed me was the roll out rack he mounted his Honda 7000 generator on. Like opening a drawer in the kitchen, it slides out the side of his rig. We had no trouble finding stuff to buy from Teddy, including his last Loki M1378.
Second on my list is Chris’ Rocket supplies. His trailer is a marvel, it’s hard to imagine how he can get so much stuff in there and still be so easy to find what you want. Not to take anything away from the other wonderful vendors that show up here, but Chris has some mad organizational skills, that even show up on his web page. It has to be the easiest website to navigate that I have ever experienced.
Sharon and I pride ourselves in being good consumers, so we always try to buy something from any vendor that shows up at a launch we attend. This can be difficult at a launch like Airfest, with so many excellent vendors showing up on the Rocket Pasture. We pre-ordered from Wildman, and picked up our packages from him on Friday. But there is always some little thing, like a CSI button tracker, that we found in his trailer, that we just had to add. Tim has this cool little device that allows him to set the frequency to whatever number you want. Now that’s customer service.
Next up was Mile High rocketry, who is also a LOKI vendor. I was looking at a 54/2800 casing, but Sharon said we already had plenty of long 54’s, and chose a 54/1200 that fit in one of her short fat rockets.
Having AMW/Pro-X as an Arizona neighbor means we always have access to their enormous inventory in Glendale, AZ. We still found a couple of kits that we couldn’t live without when we stopped by yesterday. Gloria seemed a bit concerned that we would run out of cash before they opened the waiver, but we survived, despite my thinner wallet.
Sharon always seems to come up with a couple extra twenties when we need them.
The Kloudbusters did open the HPR waiver early in the afternoon, and gradually increased the altitude limits as the clouds cleared away.
After our shopping spree, we retired to the toy hauler to get ready for the Texas compound Shrimp boil. Those Texans really know how to throw a party! That will probably take me another two hours to type up, so I will close for now. When I get back to my real computer later this week, I promise to start another thread, “Wayco’s reflections on Airfest 27”.
That motor just burned and burned! Sorry to hear about the car trouble. Guess I drove right past you on Monday afternoon without even knowing.
