Launch Report for September 10th, 1987
(Written on Thursday, December 10th, 1998, based on flight logs from that time.)

My friend Tony & I went out to the park at the corner of Hope & Stanton here in Chateauguay, Quebec, Canada to send up Aurora which at the time was my highest powered and highest flying rocket.  Visibility was excellent and it was sunny and about 26 degrees Celcius.

Flight 93, 2nd flight this year
Scratch built Aurora on a Flight Systems Inc. F7-4 for its 2nd flight

For this flight, I used my Challenger 1 launch controller which I had modified by extending the length of the cord to over 30 feet since I didn't want to be only ten feet away from an "F" motor.  As in the first flight, I put a note in the rocket asking whoever found the rocket to call me so I could come and pick it up and in return, I offered a five dollar reward.

Tony pressed the launch button while I tried to take a photo of it while it was taking off.  Like the previous launch of this rocket, the motor was LOUD and we could hear the motor throughout its nine second burn, but the rocket had long since sailed out of sight, just like it did on the first flight.  We never even had a clue which direction it had come down in.

We drove around and asked people if they saw a rocket land anywhere in the area. We did find some people who saw it, but no one could pinpoint exactly where it had landed.  We ended up giving up the search.  That night, someone gave me a call to tell me that my rocket had landed in their back yard.  No one approached it for hours because they were afraid of it and it wasn't until their son had come home that he decided to check it out.  He read the note, I paid the reward, and Aurora lives to fly again another day!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Just to say Hi?

E-mail: kbedard@rocketryonline.com

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