WSR launch, Saturday, November 7, 2020
 

Great shots of the Pershing 1-A! I've never seen a real one.
Looks like you had a good day in the field.
I was hoping to take advantage of the weather to do some flying too, but other things got in the way.
The Ventris/Archer near miss-tangle up sounds entertaining.
Very nice flight report.

Excellent blog post Bill :)
That first blue sky picture behind your Maxi Streak kinda says it all. Beautiful day. After this hurricane season I’ll take a blue sky any day!

So, first thing I do with one of your new blog posts is rush to scroll through and look at all the pretty pictures. I couldn’t wait to get back to your black and yellow Vaughn Brothers VB Extreme until I went back to actually read the text and saw it was an HL exclusive Estes Vapor :o
What a nice looking bird, very sleek.

Wow a Red Max on the pad next to your Super Neon XL and it’s not yours ... what’s up with that? :D

+1 to what Erik said love the Pershing that was also flown at the launch. When I was in high school a buddy of mine built and flew his Estes Pershing on a D12-3. That launch was more of a controlled lob than a flight. Looks like the E20W flight went great. I wouldn’t consider [risk] a D12-3 flight on a beautiful rocket like that if it were mine.

Funny you mention the Semroc Lil’ Hustler as a sentimental favorite for #200. My Lil’ Hustler is a sentimental favorite too. It’s the oldest SLS rocket in my collection that is still flyable after all these years. When I pick it up and hold it in my hands it’s like a little tank. So solid with the LT thick walled tubing and thru-the-wall fins. I’ve dropped it fast on two high altitude flights with a streamer [not recommended] but I couldn’t chance losing it. I love mine. I have a surface crack between two fins I need to post about one day. You guys with the eBay rescue rockets and repairs could probably suggest the best way to repair mine. It was painted with old Krylon that I no longer have so I don’t want to mess it up either. It’s actually on the bench waiting for that repair so I can fly it in the spring ;)

Nice flights.
Looks like the E20W is a good minimum for the Pershing 1A.
I saw one "fly" on a D12-3 and it was a ridiculous joke. Maybe 100'.

I went all fan-boy on the Pershing. I think this was the third place I posted about it. I have a nose cone for a BT-60 that I got from Gordon years ago. I think I need to get serious about getting that built this winter. :cool:

I'm still kicking myself for not following the flight of the Pershing, but I did get the shots I wanted, so they're more nudges than kicks. Now if I could just talk my brother in law into bringing his Atlas down for a flight......
As for the Max, I still haven't completely recovered from my Max Day launch back in August. Just seeing that one on the pad gave me a flashback. :D I think it will be 2021 before I consider dusting one off again.
I've had pretty good luck with the SLS kits in my collection. All three are still flying and holding up fairly well. The Lil Hustler fins have that tendency to pop off, but so far the damage has been minimal. I'd love to piece together some of the others, but all of them have key parts missing in the eRockets catalog. I guess I can figure out a way to fake them. It's never bothered me in the past.

A D12-3 flight would be something to see. Once. Hard to imagine that there was a time when it was considered a viable engine for such a bulky bird.

I can attest that mine flew well enough to be safe in calm air, but it had some pucker factor cause that back end moved like a hula girl in a grass skirt going up. I never flew it again.

If it ever gets re-released, I'll build it with a removable mount. It would fly fine on a triple C6-3 cluster, assuming you don't have to add much nose weight to what it already has. For that matter, it would do ok on a triple B6-2 cluster. It would have similar total impulse to the D12 and a harder kick off the pad, low but stable. Then on the big fields, move up to single composites.

E18/E20/E28/E30 is a logical minimum for this one. Glad they ditched that on the re-released 1/45 LJII.
Fiddling around with clusters when not needed seems like introducing another failure-point.

But...but...you like crashes? I'm beginning to think GH stands for constant contradictions in some other language.

Clusters are cool and super easy to accomplish if you take your time, use the right equipment, and know what you're doing.