WSR Launch, Dayton, OH - 2/27/21
 

Sixty degree days in February are nothing to be taken lightly, so even with the coin toss as to which field we'd be flying on, I wasn't going to miss this chance. We wound up on the "little" field, which is still large enough to be E, F and G friendly. I had a list prepared as to what I wanted to take, but lists only work if you can remember where you put them. In the end I spent Friday night pulling birds from boxes and picking as many dusty and new birds as I could find. I wound up taking about 20 rockets and was running about an hour late. I figured I'd work my way through and was hoping to put up 10-12, but I wound up surprising myself by flying fifteen. (I think Mike Rohde and I accounted for almost 20% of the total number of 154 on the day.) Everything flew great except for my new Kormoran scratchbuild, which apparently needs another pound or two of nose weight. It stayed straight until it was out of the range of the camera, but eventually started swapping ends and landed with a thud without damage in between the flightline and the cars. Mike Rohde had an Astron Cobra disassemble itself mid-flight on a 3xB6-6 load. Not sure what the issue was there as the Cobra is usually foolproof. I had mine along, but decided against flying it because I'd forgotten my clip whip. It was in a box on the table along with all of my C6-0 and A10-0T motors, so no Texas Firefly flight. :( Prez Dave spent most of the day trying to kill Chuff the Magic Dragon, an Estes Vapor with a death wish. He was flying it on a bunch of 20ish year old composites and it lived up to the name on a couple of occasions. The last few flights were done after the nose cone was lost and it was found that an Apollo capsule would fit into the nose cone area. I missed the flight, but Loopy had a perfect C6-3 flight with an R2D2 rocket, then spent the rest of the day guarding his car from attack.

Sounds like a good day - I debated making the drive but couldn’t get excited about over 4 hours in the car there and back. I saw a few pictures on FB but if you have any handy I’m sure we’d all like to see them. Future plan is an overnight trip with a visit to eRockets and the AF Museum and maybe a trail run if the Ohio River RR club does a live event rather than something virtual.

Great day all around. I drive an hour both ways and on a day like Saturday I think two hours would be worthwhile. I arrived at noon and managed three flights an hour, so pad space was definitely available. My drive is closer to 1.5 hours when we fly in Cedarville, but that only gets bad on the drive home. I think it's 58 years and walking in plowed fields that make the drive tough. Still an enjoyable day. I have more pics to load to Facebox later, both my flights and others. Highlights are the Kormoran skywriting, a Klingon battle cruiser rekitting and a straight up/straight down Beta flight.

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Sixty degrees!? I thought the midwest had tough winter weather? ;)

It has been either snowing and cold, or too windy, to fly on the designated launch dates lately. But my next attempt to go launch mid-month should coincide with the start of Springtime flying weather.

That was last week. Or next week. I forget.
Even with all the rain and snowmelt the field was barely wet. There's a creek on the other side of the soccer field and a river across the road. The place must drain incredibly well.

We had 54°F afternoon temps yesterday here in Michigan.
Today was a high of 29°F, with a low of 8°F tonight. Yeccchhh.

Mid 40's for us yesterday, but this morning it was in the 20's to start off. I think today is supposed to be mid 40's again, then warming later in the week. Looks like 40's and 50's for much of our near future. Our next cornfield launch is March 13. We'd need some pretty dry conditions between now and then to get that field dry enough to fly on.

Today was a beautiful day for painting rockets in Colorado! Around 60° most of the day, sunny, no wind. Its about 5pm now, and 63°. That just feels odd, after having snow and terrible temperatures last week.

Should be the same tomorrow. I may get all my backlog done, or at least most of it.

Today we'll push 60, not quite there, but close. I have a couple of painting projects I'd like to get to this afternoon. If I was smart, I'd slip up to B6-4 Field and knock March out, but I doubt that's in the cards.