PARS goes to HOT ROCKETS - Summer 2007 - Benington  
   

Stratosphere - lost and found - The story of a battle
with nettles

With the loss of Blue Smaurai, we decided to cheer ourself
up with a crazy rocket flight - Stratosphere on an E.

Stratosphere is one of our lightest model rockets, and
always flies straight up and high. We had only done it
on a D before. We knew it would fly very high on an E,
and that the nature of the Benington site might it hard
to recover.

It flew VERY high. Possibly, over 2000 feet. The rocket
drifted downwind for a few fields, and appeared to land
over a group of trees.

Video will be inserted here later.

We walked to the area, but could not find the rocket.
Fortunately, Stratosphere was carrying a Loc8tor tracker.
Unfortunately, after a search, a signal was picked up from
inside a private wooded area. Climbing over a gate, we
continued the search, and, horror - found a strong signal
from inside a large field of high nettles.

There was only one thing to do ... we had to use sticks
to beat down the nettles, and find the rockets. The field
was thorns and nettles. It took us over an hour to reach
the spot .... and when we got there, another problem ....

The rocket was up a tree, out of sight. Without Loc8tor,
we could not have found it, but the problem now was to
get it down.

We returned to the launch site, borrored a long pole, and
then walked back over the fields, and into the nettles, to
get the rocket.

We were successful.

Stratosphere flies again

About one field away, the Benington site has a small quary.
Our rocket, Stratosphere - on its second flight of the day
after being recovered from the nettles, ended up here - but
undamaged.

Stratosphere lives to fly again. We look forward to its next
E-class flight.

The quarry at Benington

A typical Air Rocket, capable of 1000 feet
PARS goes to HOT ROCKETS - an adventure of
loss, nettles and an air rocket

HOT ROCKETS is a rocket event organized by Paul Lavin, of the Deepsky Rocket Shop. For PARS, it turned out to be one of our strangest events.

Here is Oliver Neil Smith and Daniel Goldsmith, preparing the Blue Samurai for launch. Wind was 8mph. Surprisingly, the rocket flew a long way over stable, preventing correct deployment of the chute. The rocket landed in the next field, seriously damaged.

Oliver has decided to salvage the Rowes Retainer and fins from the rocket, but will now build the next in the "Blue" series - Blue Sensei.

Video will be provided later.

Our first adventure with Air Rockets

At the event, we had great fun with our new air rockets - a present for PARS president Howard Smith from the Fields.

We estimated we reached 1000 feet, and look forward to other PARS members trying it out.

Dan builds the Air Rocket launch pad
 
 
 

 
     
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