Flashes of Panic

My nieces are visiting. My brother took them in to the city to see The Nutcracker this afternoon, and now they’re out at the neighborhood playground, but somewhere along the way it occurred to me that I could launch a rocket. So I prepped the big old one with a B4-4 engine quickly, and when they left for the playground I went out with them. There was nobody on the fields, so I could go right out in the middle to launch.

The best part of launching so late in the day was that when it went up, you could really see the light of the engine exhaust. By luck and not design, the launcher sent it slightly upwind (over my head,) but I kept it in sight most of the way up and watched it make a clean nose-cone separation, at which point I relaxed and started winding up the wires while it drifted downwind. The girls and my brother made the retrieval and brought it back before heading for the playground; it’s solid and ready to go again, given some wadding and another engine. I think the girls were impressed; they wanted to know how high it had gone. Plane height? No, not really…

I wish I knew the model name of that rocket, because it’s been the most solid one I’ve ever launched, pretty much. Aside from the one winter launch (decades ago) where it lost two tail-fins landing on the icy lake behind our house in Maine, it keeps coming back for more. In hindsight, the nose cone didn’t pop until the rocket was already starting down; a B4-3 might make for a softer landing. I wonder if the same three-second coast would hold for a C engine?

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