Mark-II: At NARAM-48, there was someone who FORGOT TO PUT ANY CHUTE in his B eggloft Duration model. At ejection, just shock cord, no chute there at all. The other nutty thing is that model bounced on the ground yet the egg did not break. Really puts leaving your biggest best chute at home in perspective, doesn’t it?
Photo of it bouncing, below. For more see Chris Taylor's NARAMlive archive, starting with the 5th photo (liftoff).
https://naramlive.com/naramlive-2006/naramlive/05tuesday/05.html
For myself, everything that comes to mind is “Other”.
Forgetting to bring something: The worst one that comes to mind was simply when I was a kid, forgot to bring my box of all my rocket engines, to a local launch. Fortunately, it was not too far from home so I went back and got it, but still that was very annoying. I keep fearing I will go on a big trip like NARAM and forget to bring something critical like an R/C transmitter (with the all-important model memory settings in it, making a borrowed transmitter moot), or key model part, or even a model, but I have not.
Forgetting to do something important for flight: Several times, have forgotten to turn on the transmitter to an R/C RBG before launch. Fortunately that has only resulted in three crashes since I started flying them in 1980. Really SUCKS when that happens. This is one reason why the normal procedure before launch is to wiggle the sticks and confirm the model is responding, but each of those times I was not doing the normal procedure. In the other photos below, a before photo of a Cuda-Flap model before I had added the top sheeting to the nose. Then the after photo. And then how mangled the servos were. The only thing salvageable was the 24mm R/C reload casing.
The above must be absolutely everything in rocketry I have ever forgotten to do.... ever. Unless I forgot the others......(yeah, there are undoubtedly more, it's just that no big other ones come to mind at the moment.).
I will say I await "Guy Noir's” Tucson incident addition to this thread..... (I was going to make a less obtuse reference, but it's best that he does it and nobody else spoil it).
Good thing this thread is about forgetting something, and not installing something wrong, or I would have another biggie to add there.... (at least it was not anything R/C, and was not badly damaged)
- George Gassaway