Tripoli Indiana December 2009
December 2009
/ Ash Grove Site
1 flight, 338 N-sec burned
The weather forecast wasn't promising, and when I arrived on the field, a light rain was falling and everyone was huddled in Doug Jackson's trailer for the club meeting. John Tsohas showed up a few minutes after I did, determined to get his Level 1 certification, and soon the rain stopped - maybe we WERE going to have a launch! While John and I prepped in Doug's trailer (with a heater!), several Estes rockets were launched. Finally, John got his Mongoose in the air, and I managed to put up Little Dragon on a CTI Skidmark. Not too bad for a rainy day!
Flight 1: Little Dragon, CTI I180
Since the ceiling was so low, I kept the remainder of my 640 loads in the box, and pulled out instead my CTI 3-grain case and an I180SK reload I had picked up for it at the previous launch. (Thanks to Kendall Reed from Tripoli Vegas for the case... it was a raffle prize from Turkey Shoot three years ago, and this was the first time I was going to use it!) Prep went well until I had the vehicle on the pad and attempted to arm the altimeter, to no avail - one of the power leads had popped loose from the board, so it was back into Doug's trailer to rewire the whole avbay before reloading the vehicle and getting the three happy beeps of dual deployment. I set the main at 400' to keep from having to walk too far through the muddy fields. The CTI Skidmark motor did not disappoint, igniting quickly and providing a spectacular boost. After burnout, the thunder echoed off a distant treeline. NEAT! Little Dragon coasted to apogee under the cloud deck and became two pieces for its descent down to main deployment, which happened as planned for a landing just downwind of the pad. Perfect flight for today.
Altitude: 1,836 ft
others: liftoff
