Late last week, at a launch at Dove Valley Park in Centennial, Colorado, I flew my scratch-built Edmonds Aerospace Deltie Airshow model for its maiden run.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this model, it consists of a core rocket to which not one...not two... but three delta wing gliders are attached. A very high-drag affair, at best.
Grossly over-estimating an A8-3 motor's capability of being able to lift such a model high enough to perform properly, I went forward with prepping the model, placing it on the launcher, attaching the clips, counting down, and pushing the 'GO' button.
What transpired was a flight that can only be described as...well...interesting.
As it turned out, fellow rocketeer, Mike Goss, happened to catch the entire flight on a mobile phone video. Later that evening I was delighted to receive an email from Mike. He had taken the time to go through the video and extract a number of still frames that clearly show every phase of the flight in detail.
I have posted the entire sequence here:
"3...2...1...Ignition !!"
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Back in the early days of digital cameras, I had a 2mp that I got as a 40th birthday gift. (One of my all-time favorites.) Chan Stevens and I were doing some shakedown flights for review at VOA in Cincinnati. Chan had one of the big Sunward upscales of the Canaroc kits that he was flying that day, I believe it was the Gravity Rider. As we were inspecting the build before the flight, both of us mentioned that we couldn't imagine it being an 18mm flyer, no matter how light you built it. Chan loaded it with a C6-3 and I stood by with my camera and its mighty 3 frame burst. As we expected, it clawed skyward, struggling to attain 50 feet. Even though I never moved my camera, I was able to catch the whole flight in the three burst frames. Long story short, the Gravity Rider was eventually changed to a more realistic 2x18mm cluster, and cell phones have replaced cameras in burst mode, obviously for the better, as shown here.
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