July 4, 1996
We have a tradition in our family - every July 4, my son and I go to my
parents' house to launch rockets. The elementary school I attended is across
the street, and has a large, grassy field. I launched many, many rockets
there as a kid, and it's fun to go back and launch them there with my son.
Many of the neighbors remember my launches of years ago, and they always
come out to watch us. We started out by losing two rockets, the Estes Asteroid
Explorer and the Skywinder. But both rockets had a lot of successful launches
in their careers, and mishaps are bound to happen.
Left to right: The final liftoff of the Estes Skywinder, and the
beginning of the SR 71 Blackbird's successful flight.
We decided to launch the Omloid again (the same one from three years ago)
with another raw egg. We successfully recovered the egg, much to the chagrin
of some of our neighbors - they were hoping that the egg would be released
at apogee, and fall to the ground, perhaps narrowly missing a spectator.
Sorry to disappoint them!
The Omloid is on her way. This is a very stable rocket, and always has
picture-perfect flights. In the photo on the right, you can barely make
out the ejection charge deploying the recovery system.
A thing of beauty to a model-rocketeer - a fully deployed parachute!
Here, Joseph is trying to catch the Omloid before it touches the ground.
It landed relatively close to the launch pad.
A perfect flight!
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