It was a bit breezy at times, and the field was a bit weird as there was a ~1' wide 'river' between the access road and the field, so you could only park on the road and 'hop' over the muddy patch if you wanted a larger or shaded setup area (like to put up my ez-up). I keep most of my gear in my truck so there was a lot of stepping over the wet area, and a few times where the ground at the edge was softer than expected and I really sunk in.
I did get to use my new 'dog stakes' (16" spiral anchors from OSH) for the first time, and the length was important as they really didn't find sturdy ground until about the last 4-6".
But otherwise a great day. I had 3 motors built ahead of time (rare for me) but only got to fly two of them as it turns out I broke a wire in the drogue harness for my 38mm MD rocket, so I got out to the pad and the SLCF was only giving 2 beeps instead of 3 (I had 3 beeps at my table, but that was before loading the BP and screwing the AVBay together, that bay has always been a bit tight and one of the wires got pinched), and I couldn't field-repair that issue, so that rocket got grounded. But I did fly my Nike Smoke on a J401FJ and a J1520VM (2 of the 3 biggest motors I had in my personal inventory), both went to ~4850' and I have pad and onboard video for both flights that I need to review today.
As Kevin said, there were
tons of cert flights, I guess it was the backlog from months of launches getting scrubbed. At least half if not 2/3 or 3/4 of the HPR flights yesterday I'd say. Sometimes the entire rack was cert flights. Most seemed to be successful. Though yesterday was also the largest number of flights I've seen (at least 3) with rockets that didn't separate at all, but instead of coming down ballistic they wound up spinning their way down. Seemed to be 'gentile' enough landings to not harm the airframes (helps that the ground was fairly soft also), though it's obviously harder on the fins since they were rotating pretty fast when they hit. I came across two of these while recovering my rocket, one larger rocket (almost 8' tall, probably 6" diameter or maybe 8") survived fully intact, another long-and-skinny lost a fin (neither of these were cert flights).
Stupidly, I forgot to bring my suntan lotion, and it didn't dawn on me until late in the afternoon that I hadn't even put on the safari hat that I usually wear at launches, so it looks like I got a decent sunburn yesterday. Guess I was having too much fun to think about it at the time.
[ow, that hurts]