One day I was in Paul's Arts and Crafts Store with my girlfriend bored out of my mind; then I saw the Rockets Section! It was probably an indirect result of SpaceShipOne and the X-Prize (Burt Rutan had just won a few days before,) but I bought the biggest one they had there - a "D" powered Estes StormCaster.
I hadn't shot off any Rockets in about 20 years but, I dug out all my old stuff from some dusty boxes I haven't opened in a long, long time, and even found some small Rockets that were all beat up with the fins bent/broken. I fixed up the small ones as "expendables" to judge the wind direction/strength before sending off my new one. The small rockets were so old that the shock cords had practically turned to dust! I built my new StormCaster with meticulous care.
Yup, I lost 'er. It was a windy day and like I intended, I used the old small "expendable" Rockets to fine tune the launch angle to counter the wind. After a few launches starting from small "A" motors and working up to "C" motors they were landing kind'a close, so I figured "good enough, it's time for the new one." Shot 'er off, it flew very straight, chute deployed perfectly, and it drifted gracefully back to earth; drifting, and drifting, and drifting over our heads and about a half a mile down wind. Sort'a kind'a guesstimated that it landed in a parking lot by a tall building way in the distance, but a few minutes of searching that parking lot turned up nothing. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
I'm going to keep building, but probably won't put that much effort in to painting. It had eight coats of paint! Two coats of white primer, two coats of Yellow paint, masked the fins and put two coats of red with a careful blending to the yellow in the center of the body, then (finally) two coats of Acrylic Clear. I used a small air brush, so it took a long time per coat. That's too much work for something that can get lost so easily.
