Prangs, CATOes, and Other Moments of Fright!

	Saturday, December 12th, 1998	Flight 117: My 1981 vintage Estes Scout was lost for over three hours before I found pieces of it in the street.  Cars had run over it over and over again throughout the day before I came across a fin along the side of the street.  A methodical search allowed me to recover the pieces shown at left.  One fin and the motor retaining hook remain missing.
	Saturday, December 12th, 1998	Flight 123: A 1986 vintage FSI E60-8 CATOed in my scratch built Aurora.  My first CATO.  Not bad that it took 123 flights for one to finally happen!
	Saturday, May 6th, 2000	Flight 366: I made a bad call when I chose to launch Aerotech Arreaux on an F25-9W in a schoolyard.  It's a large schoolyard and if the rocket went straight, it likely would've landed within my recovery area, but sure enough, the rocket veered sharply towards the west.  The image at left is taken from a few sheer luck frames of video at maximum zoom.  It was the only indication that I had that the parachute had deployed and that the rocket descended safely.  I received a phone call a week later that the rocket had been found.
	Friday, July 7th, 2000	Flight 379: My long discontinued Estes America pranged on pavement from an A8-3 that had no ejection charge.  The motor's clay cap was still in place.  I managed to salvage the bottom half of the rocket and America still flies today with a new upper body tube and nose cone.
	December 30th, 2000	Flight 481: My Estes Super Nova Payloader made its last flight when a mid-body separation occurred and the top two thirds of the rocket drifted away forever.  The bottom third now serves as the lower half of my (nearly) scratch built Super Nova rocket.