Launch Date: September 26th, 2025, PART 1

 On Friday, September 26th, nine rocketeers from the Colorado Front Range converged on Dove Valley Regional Park in Centennial to launch some rockets on the large, well-manicured complex of soccer fields. This turned out to be a record turnout of participants from the group,

Temperatures at the field were a comfortable 75 to 78 degrees, southerly breezes fluctuated from 3 to 8 mph, and mostly clear skies with some high-altitude cloud cover. 

The field was deserted, save for the presence of a far-off grounds-maintenance crew...and a pair of robotic lawn mowers cruising about on their pre-programmed patterns...

...which leads us to the subject of this first post.

Participating rocketeer Lee Reep experienced a highly unusual outcome to his first flight of the day.

The story is best served in Lee's own words:

"My first flight of the day went to the Jet Freak, a boost glider I try to fly at every Dove Valley launch.  

I really thought this was its final flight. This was one to remember.  Boosted by an A8-3 motor, the glider flew a somewhat erratic path to the north, and at ejection, went into an erratic dipping and circling descent, eventually settling down about 100 yards north of the pads.  

And then along came one of the robot mowers - headed right towards it!

Of all the places the Jet Freak could land, and of all the paths the mower could take, it had turned and headed back straight for my glider.  I ran, but was too far away from it, before it disappeared from view!  The mower gobbled it up!  Or so I thought … There were no bits of bright yellow balsa thrown out the back with grass clippings.  No sign at all that it had even been eaten.  The mower proceeded on easily, turned around, and started heading back to the scene of the crime.  Somebody mentioned that they could see it (I was too shocked to remember who.) Rich Wallner stepped into the mower’s path, and it stopped.  (Apparently a bright fluorescent yellow glider was too small to cause the mower to stop.) 

There on a little deck above the mower blades sat my Jet Freak, looking intact! I pulled it out.  Not a scratch! 

Absolutely incredible that in the many acres of grass soccer filed, that glider would meander toward a spot that a robot mower would cross and scoop it up, resulting in a somewhat perfect flight.

This bird is a favorite of mine. It harkens back to the 80s at least, maybe the 70s.  Its design appeared in a club newsletter.  It was apparently designed by an 11- year-old kid! Everyone was impressed at its simplicity, and how well it flew.  When asked what he called it, he responded “Jet Freak”. Somebody from the club obtained the model's rough dimensions, and made a sketch, then published it in their club newsletter.  I can find the plan and send to the group if anyone wants to build one. A pretty good performer if trimmed properly, and very easy to build."

A couple of blogger's notes:

Thank you, Lee, for a most amusing flight and a great story write-up. Glad to see that the glider escaped Un-'Scythed' and lived to fly another day!

Thanks also to Rich Wallner for providing the photos and flight video. 

Last evening, I pored through the video footage to see if the actual 'encounter' between glider and mower was visible.  I clipped a frame of the video right at the point that the mower entered the field of view, then zoomed up to 600%.

The image is too far away and blurry to see the glider, or it had been gobbled up further to the right of the image, just before the mower came into view. 

Lee, 

I, for one, would definitely like to see those plans for the Jet Freak!

Don't forget to check back here on the blog over the next few days for further reporting on the rest of this Dove Valley launch session. 

Cheers!