NCR Club Launch - Oktoberfest 2007 - Day 2

Saturday October 6th, 2007

Launch Summary

Day Two of a planned three day weekend launch celebrating Oktoberfest on the prairie.  An ominous weather forecast may have spooked away some of the crowd but 76 flyers put up a total of 176 flights. Steven Rhodes led the field with seven flights.  Lots and lots of notable flights, including, in no particular order, Chandon Stone's 3 E9 cluster named Payload Stone, Ed Wranosky's McCool Junction flown by Frognaut Smoochy on a Skyripper I to 6360', the combined building talents of Geof and Jim Givens for an EMRR contest with Captain Electric's Saturn Screamer on an H180, Paul Fechtmeister's rainbow swirl painted Velociraptor, Mike Shinn's 5.5 Upscaled Mosquito, Chris and Ray LaPanse's Upscale Deuce on a pair of K700's, Mark Lionberger's meticulous BBX/Terrier two stage, Neil Givens' scratch built Space Dagger, Ken Reilly's awesome boost of Storm Lilly to 12,414 on a K570, Ed Dawson's SSSS entry flight and recovery from 12,361, Dave Hanson's IQSY Tomahawk, and the 43rd successful flight of Ian MacDonald's Thistle II. 

Another busy day for Certification flights.  Congratulations to John Reilly and Danielle Stevens for their Jr. L1 flights.  It should be noted that Danielle is the first NCR female to earn the NAR Jr. L1 and she did in style with an I205.   Level One Certifications were earned by Greg Arend with his Big Black on an I285, Paul Fechtmeister flew his Velociraptor on an H153, Robert Kraft boosted his Small Endeavor on an H153, Jeff Schadl flew his Phobos with an H153 and Peter Van Dyke flew his X-Calibur, also on an H153.   Steven Hendricks achieved his L2 with an impressive flight of his Talon 4 on the Aerotech J350.  And Eric Dickey's Tower of Power II rode the power of an Aerotech M1315 to prove his abilities and achieve L3.  Congratulations to every flyer and apologies to any others that may have certified but didn't get their paperwork to me.

Flights are listed in a random order as the launch cards have been sorted and shuffled a few times eliminating the actual sequence of events.  Motor usage breaks down as follows, with staged and clusters credited to the largest motor used.  A's=5, B's=17, C's=20, D's=8, E's=17, F's=17, G's=28, H's=24, I's=20, J's=11, K's=7, L's=1 and M's=1. 

Weather Conditions

The weather forecast was wrong and Saturday was another stunning day on the prairie.  Clear Oktober skies, warm temperatures and just a tickle of wind.  Launch conditions were near perfect, that is, right up until about 3:30.   The much earlier predicted winds finally blew in and with a vengence from the north.  Flight operations were cancelled for the remainder of the day and lots of folks bunkered down for the evening, listening to the wind blow, in gusts up to 40 mph, and waiting for rain that fortunately never materialised.  Temperatures dropped to the high thirties but by midnight, the storm had lost its punch and calmed to almost nothing.