Launch Date: October 30th, 2026

 This past Friday, absolutely superb weather settled in along the Colorado Front Range along with an end to the seemingly endless period of burn restrictions.

Six members of our Colorado group converged on Dove Valley Regional Park to air out some model rockets. 

The spacious field was in excellent shape, and better weather couldn't have been asked for - temperature in the mid-60s and calm air. Any breezes present didn't exceed three mph.

A substantial number of models were flown, ranging from clones of vintage Estes designs all the way up to some of the newer models, and everything in between, including a couple of odd-rocs.

Without further ado, here are some pics, starting with a preview of some of the models to be flown:

Mike Goss came to Dove Valley with everything prepped and ready to fly!

Part one of Greg Hauser's Arsenal....

...and Part 2.

Newcomer to the group, Scott Wetterstrom, ready to start preppin'

Mike Goss was the only one to break out some gliders to fly.
Here is the Jet Freak.

This one is a Wombat.

Mike was also the only participant to launch a Halloween-themed rocket.
This is a plastic inverted candy bowl. 

My first flight of the day went to a two stager - an Estes Viking atop a custom-built gap booster stage.  A8-0, A8-5 motors.  Perfect flight! 

Greg Hauser poses with a nicely-built Nike/Sandhawk model.

All is GO....

3...2...1... Time to fill out one of those MESS reports!

Following is Jim Gazur's interesting project.  Jim kindly sent me a detailed description of the rocket and flight details.  I have cut and pasted it here:

"This rocket is a test-bed for a planned attempt on the Tripoli G-impulse altitude record.  The Aerotech G12ST motor I'll use for the record attempt is about $50 a pop and hard to come by, so I built a comparable model to fly on a Quest C12 with the same center of gravity and rail exit velocity.  Running a thin margin of stability is important, as an extra millimeter of fin span costs almost 100 feet of altitude.  Of course, I've run hundreds of OpenRocket simulations, but I wanted to ground that with some flight experience.  In particular, I wanted to see if the fly-away rail guide departing the rocket would cause issues.  As the screenshot from the video kindly provided by Mike Goss shows, the rail guide separated cleanly.  I used an 8-foot rail, as opposed to a tower, since I'm considering using a 16-foot rail for higher exit velocity so I can run even smaller fins, and a 16-foot tower would entail more pain & agony than I care to deal with.  The first flight went beautifully, so I cut the fins down from 31mm span to 28mm for the second flight which flew straight as well.  The Featherweight Blue Jay 2 flight computer reports 3-axis acceleration at 50 samples per second, so I'll have to spend some time analyzing the data from the two flights before I can determine areas for performance improvement, but I'm encouraged by these two flights at Dove Valley."

Scott Wetterstrom preps an Estes Doorknob for flight.

Liftoff for a perfect flight!

The Great Photon Disruptor Drag Race !

Since both Dave Bauer and Mike Goss happened to bring a Photon Disruptor model to Dove Valley this day it was only natural to stage a drag-race style launch!

Here are a couple views of the simultaneous liftoff:

Dave's model did something quite unexpected - it happened to lift off the pad taking the launch rod along for the ride!  The model did more than disrupt photons - it also disrupted a small portion of the local ecology via a rather harsh landing!

I was having so much fun watching everyone else's flights, I was neglecting my own birds. 
My second flight of the day went to the ol' flagship EAC Viper.
Great flight on a B6-4.

Greg's well- built Orbital Transport turned in an excellent flight.

The Orbiter wheeled around in stable flight and came in for a successful landing very near the launch area!

NOTE: Due to time constraints, I will be adding photos and commentary to this post on a piecemeal basis. I'm eager to get this stuff out there, but processing photos takes a lot of fiddling on the keyboard. Most of the photos will be posted first with more detailed captions to follow.

Please check back often!

Back In Business In Colorado !

 Hi, All,

Finally, after a very long period of absence, I am back to hacking away here at the blog!

Back in late September all of the local Colorado municipalities finally lifted the Burn Bans and Fire Danger Restrictions. 

This means that us rocketeers along the Front Range could get back to flying models again. This past Friday, October 30th, we were blessed with ideal weather, so six of our group made the trek to Dove Valley Park. 

This is the first time we've been able to conduct a launch session since September 2025 !!  Needless to say, everyone was quite ready for a flyin' fix!

This outing also jolted me out of my rocket building doldrums and has inspired me to get my rear end down the stairs and get working on all of the long-neglected builds that yet lurk in the Basement La-boratory!

I am currently working through all the photos and flight videos from this launch event so that I can post a report here this week.   Please check back.

Cheers !

At Last, 2 Birds Ready For Primer!

 I finally finished grain filling, sanding, and prepping these two Nike rockets for primer.

This has been a long time coming.

Now, all I have to wait for is a relatively windless day to get them outside with the rattle cans.

Perhaps I will get some rockets completed this year, after all.

Back To Normal Again

 The very day after my last post, Castle Rock and Douglas County went right back to the burn ban restrictions.

There hasn't been a drop of rain in the past week and the wind has been at a high level every single day. The area is a virtual tinder-box!

Add to that the smoke plumes from a large wildfire on the Colorado/Utah border blowing straight into the Colorado Front Range, making it unhealthy to be outside for any length of time.

Interestingly, there was a story on local news this morning about a nearby wildfire that was started by lightning - on a golf course!!

I would have thought that a well- manicured and irrigated place like that would be immune to fires. 

Guess not...

Anyway, the model rocket flying drought drags on as well.

A Quick Post For The Blog.

 Hi, All,

I haven't gone away from the BlastFromThePast blog, I'm only on a hiatus.

Fire burn bans have finally been lifted here in Castle Rock and Douglas County, but now the problem is that there hasn't been much in the way of decent flying weather sans brisk windy conditions.

With the continued drought and the increase in warmer summer temperatures, I'm sure it won't be long until we're back on burn bans.

The outlook for a Front Range group launch seems bleak at the moment, but I am on the eagle-eye lookout for a day when weather might be favorable to do a launch excursion.

The good news is that all the weather models I have been reading speak of an El Nino weather pattern developing in the Pacific.  This (hopefully) will serve to bring substantial amounts of moisture to Colorado beginning in late summer and extending through the fall and winter months.

We'll have to wait and see.

I also haven't much to report on rocket building activity.  I have a couple birds on the bench close to be ready for shooting primer but just haven't spent much time with getting them finished.

Jeez! I thought when I retired there would be much more time available for rocket building.

(Cue game show buzzer sound)

Family activity, yard work, honey-do projects, and music writing have been taking up a large chunk of my time.

Anyway, I just wanted to jump on the blog here and let you all know that things will get cranked up again in the near future.

Thanks for reading.  Keep 'em flying!

-Ed

BAck To The Bench !!

 This past week, I finally got my rear into gear and made the long trek to the basement La-BOR-atory to immerse myself in a bit of rocket construction.

My efforts resulted in getting the Nike-Smoke and the Nike-Apache ready for primer.

This session involved attaching the fins on the latter, applying fillets to both models, prepping the plastic parts, and filling in any spots on the fins where I might have missed some grain.

On a different subject, I've been reading some encouraging news on the rocket flying front.

Meteorologist are predicting a super El Nino weather pattern forming this year.

What this means is that drought-stricken Colorado will likely be seeing much more moisture beginning in the latter part of the year.

This also means that we should have respite from the non-stop fire danger burn bans imposed by the local municipalities, which are currently responsible for the lack of model rocket launching.

Guess it's time to spend more time in the shop and start stocking up on the motor inventory!

Cheers!

Happy 2026 !!

 Happy and prosperous New Year to all !! 

In keeping with my annual New Year tradition, it's time to post my look-back at the previous year's rocketry activity.

This year's post is very short indeed:

Launch sessions:        2

Rocket flights:            10

New rockets built:      0

I did manage to get a smattering of progress accomplished on a couple of outstanding builds, but not enough to get any of them completed and flight-ready.

So, for 2026 I'm quite ready to reverse this rocketry drought and get back into the swing of getting birds built and hitting the flying field again. After all, I'm coming up on my 10th anniversary of becoming a BAR. Gotta make it count. 

Stay tuned. Lots to come in 2026 !!

Cheers!