Launch Report for Friday, December 29th, 2000

Today was going to be my first launch in the dead of winter since 1982. I walked out to my regular flying field at the schoolyard of Howard S. Billings Regional High School here in Chateauguay in the province of Quebec in Canada with a long box full of rockets and irt was my hope to beat my personal record for the most propellant I've burned in a single year. I was only a little over 100 N-s away from beating last year's record.

The winds were calm but very cold coming in out of the southwest at about 10 km/h. Temperature was -7 degrees Celsius (19.4 degrees F) with a wind chill factor of -17 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees F). Throughout the field, there was an average of about 15 cm (six inches) of snow on the ground. It was sunny for the most part with only a few clouds in the sky.

As launch equipment goes, I brought my third Estes Porta Pad launch pad, Quest launch controller, and of course my camcorder to record every flight and to produce the images you see on this page.

Flight 474, 125th flight this year
Scratch built Phantom III on an Estes 1/2A3-4T for its 3rd flight



	The first flight of the day was my scratch built 1982 vintage Phantom III on a 1981 vintage 1/2A3-4T. A nice flight that arced over past apogee and landed a mere one foot from the pad's launch rod! By far, this is the closest I've ever managed to land a rocket to the pad. This rocket is perfect for a winter launch since it uses no real recovery device. It's light enough that it can simply fall out of the sky without even a streamer.

Flight 476, 126th flight this year
Estes Ninja 01 on an Estes 1/2A3-2T for its 10th flight



One of my first BAR rockets, my first Estes Ninja was next up on a 1/2A3-2T and I fixed that thrust vectoring problem that the motor retainer hook was causing. On a streamer, this rocket drifted quite a bit farther than Phantom III did.

Next up was to be my second Estes Heatseeker on an A8-3 for its very first flight. Heatseekers have a strong tendency towards weathercocking which is how I lost my first Heatseeker earlier this year and so I added nose weight to this one. An A8-3 wasn't going to send this rocket very high, but at least I wasn't likely to lose it on its first test flight.

In the end, Heatseeker 02 did not fly today since the little AA batteries in my Quest launch controller gave up the ghost after only the first two flights of the day because of the extreme cold. I brought a spare set of batteries, but I saw no logic in killing another set of batteries to get only two more flights before they die too. Next time I come out here for a winter launch, it'll be with my NCR Command Control system with a freshly charged battery.

All in all, a good but short day of flying. :)

Time at Liftoff:	16:03:35
Flight Duration in Seconds:	9
Distance from Launch Pad in Feet:	1 southwest

Time at Liftoff:	16:12:22
Flight Duration in Seconds:	10
Distance from Launch Pad in Feet:	66 northwest