ROC May 2004

The old booster section could be salvaged by trimming off 24" of tube and adding a new payload section. The shorter rocket looked plenty stable in RockSim, and so I put it on the pad with high hopes, loaded with a CTI J285. As soon as it left the rail, however, it performed a horrible oscillation maneuver -- something was definitely not right -- and at apogee, nothing happened. The CTI motor never fired its ejection charge for some reason, and the rocket piled in to the lakebed. Good riddance, I figured. This rocket deserved bigger and better fins.

After lawn darting my first flight of the day, I decided to pop off a "feel-good" flight using something nice, easy, and reliable. Reliable? Right. I'd never flown the Quasar before, but it seemed solidly built, or at least enough for a 240 N-s H motor. I had just bought a stash of Redlines from Andy Woerner, and decided to pop up the Quasar on an H148R for a nice gentle flight to about 1700 feet. It was quick to load it up, get through RSO and out to the pads. A short wait (which included bugging Wedge, the LCO at the time, to LAUNCH MY ROCKET), and we were off. The Quasar boosted nicely on a hot red flame and jumped into the sky. Deployment was a little early, but it all held together and dropped like a rock on the PML 36" chute. She landed about 200 feet from the pad. Not too bad for a first flight!