Most club launches don't allow the rod to be angled for the flight to be upwind (for safety) so its lots less common at club launches, however at personal launches there are not necessarily such restrictions, and its simply good practice as a way to fly smaller fields and recover safely, so it has happened once or twice to me over the many years and launches on my own.
As an aside, I‘ll sim my rockets to get a feel for how they will perform in wind. Yes, I know imperfect but I actually like putting a few degrees on the rod/rail in a downwind direction. Why? Well it’s easy. If the rocket has a tendency to weathercock anyways into the wind (run the sim here), if the rod is pointed a few degrees downwind, the rocket will start to weathercock into the wind and what I try to achieve is a low energy apogee event that avoids zippering ”un” reinforced cardboard tubed rockets. Sure, modrocs can get away with an upwind rod angle as long as the rubber band doesn’t break but larger rockets with more mass, I like ‘em to be traveling as close to zero velocity when the apogee charge blows. Saves on loading the harness, drogue and/or main chute if apogee only deployment plus helps avoid a zipper if the positioning is wrong. When done right, the rocket starts downwind and then curves up to apogee going upwind due to weathercocking. If launching the rocket upwind (into the wind) weathercocking will add to the angle that’s been placed on the rod/rail to make the flight path more extreme. Hence the rocket will be in more of an arc and will have a higher velocity at apogee stressing the deployment system.
I have some fast flying rockets with relatively small fin area and indeed though they are optimized, I still notice a little weathercocking so I‘ll try to dial in 2 to 3 degrees of downwind angle on ‘em. I don’t fret it though and just eyeball it as best I can at the rod/rail. Haven’t had too much trouble with zippering since. If no wind? No problemo, point ‘em straight up.
Remember, if one botches the delay on a motor only deployment, a high velocity deployment of the main well on the down side of a descent can zipper a cardboard tube on a so built HPR rocket.
Actually, my opinion is if someone can consistently fly a cardboard tubed motor deploy only HPR rocket that doesn’t have electronics 2.5 to 4 inches in diameter, that‘s not fiberglassed without zippering, they’ve mastered the nuance of flight planning/simulation in my book!
If one can‘t picture what I’ve talked about, run some rockets on a computer simulation with different windspeeds and as long as they can display the trajectory they‘ll get a good picture of weathercocking and how dialing in downwind rod/rail angles will lead to a lower velocity apogee. Kurt Savegnago