March 10, 1997 - Launch Report
Again a breeze, but lengthwise to the field this time, so we had a larger safety margin. With this in mind, I prepped the SuperShot with its first ever C6-5.
"5-4-3-2-1"
Whoosh! Away it went! The rocket weathercocked significantly into a now
stiff(!) wind. Wow, it isn't even over this field any more! Very high and
getting smaller by the second. Oooh's and aaahh's from the peanut gallery
but Kyle and I are definitely looking worried.
Finally the ejection charge went off and its smoke allowed me to start tracking it again. There's the chute! Yah, so far so good. Wow, it's really up there. Hmm, what's that black speck lower in the sky - a bird?
Uh-oh. Houston - we have a problem.
The nose cone has decided to part company with the main body and take the chute with it on a cross-country jaunt. This of course left the tail section to figure out its own path to Terra Firma. It turned out to be afraid of such heights and wanted to get back to solid ground as fast as possible. Good thing the field was soggy and soft. Recovered the tail section, some 300' downwind. It was a bit mud-spattered but undamaged.
We last saw the chute and nose cone still at about 400' and making amazingly good time going east.
Checked the shockcord mount later, looked like it was burned through. Okay, at least 5 pieces of wadding for the C6's. It was getting dark and cold, so we packed up and went cruising a few streets in the direction the chute was drifting to see if we could spot it in a tree or something. But no, it was gone.
Moral of the story? We wish we had written our name and phone number on the main sections of the rocket. The visiting kids thought rockets were cool. Kyle and I were a little bummed.