16.48 3-24-2013 ~ Blog # 513 (David) We spent over six hours at the launch site today; it was a windy day and we had a rough time. The winds were around 15 MPH and were blowing in from the East and not the West as usual. Although we launched from the far East edge of our area, we lost two of our first four rockets that we sent up. Both of these were the primary rockets of each team. An hour was lost looking for these two rockets. We then moved our launch pad 1300 feet East of our regular launch location to the edge of a muddy, plowed corn field. We didn't lose any more rockets but it was a long muddy walk to the barn between launches. I think we had more fuse failures than actual launches; this ate up loads of time. Svea's team flew both of their rockets; one flew 45' low, the other 175' too high. They cut down the air-brake streamers on the low one, and called a qualification shot. Their score would have been around 21, but their egg broke. On their second and final qualification shot the ejection charge failed and the rocket was destroyed. By this point 10 of our 12 shots of the year, from all four teams, had been used and no scores were close. One team had two qualification shots left, but it was late and the wind was picking up. On their first shot their egg broke and their altitude was low due underperforming Cesaroni motor. One ran back for a new egg and they reloaded in the field. Then, on the last launch, 16.48. That number is not a shoe-in, but it stands a reasonable chance of getting in the top 100. Our NAR official pointed out that with a higher four point penalty on the time window (48 to 50 seconds), we will likely see higher scores for the top 100 cut-off. Our fingers are crossed.

Click here to see a short HD movie of eight launches. This is the one: 16.48 Flower Power Joan I'm not even going to try to explain this right now; more to come. Love you, bye So apparently as I hung up after making an appointment with my mechanic I said, "Love you, bye."... At least that's what my kids told me... Joan had called about 10 minutes earlier; I was talking to the mechanic and Svea kept asking me, "Is that Mom?.. Is that Mom?" Then as I was finishing up with the mechanic I heard Joan pull in, so she was totally on my mind.

After I hung up Svea said, "That was too Mom".

"No it wasn't" I replied.

Svea: "You just said, "Love you, bye."

Me: "No I didn't."

Svea and Annika, "Yes you did"

Me: "I did?."

Svea and Annika, "Yes, you did"