NCR Club Launch

Saturday December 7th, 2002

Launch Summary

Another December launch that greeted flyers with spectacular flying conditions and people were eager to take advantage of it. Five Icarus attempts raised the pot and the stakes even higher. Jon Skuba set the record at just 40' below the ceiling with the blindingly fast flight of Morning Star 2, to an altitude of 8960'. Chris Hall made two unsuccessful Icarus bids using Cesaroni motors. Eric and Kyle Parsons also chased the Icarus trophy but a reset altimeter left them with no altitude (they know in their hearts the rocket flew to 9997)! Mike Anderson also came back from his Icarus flight with no altitude.
John Gray flew his beautifully finished PML Ariel on an H180 for a successful Level 1 flight - Welcome to high power John!
Charles Luciano had an impressive boost of his 1/70th scale Saturn V on an Animal Motor Works K670, but dinged it up a bit when a perfectly executed dual recovery landed it on the concrete pad.

Weather Conditions

The day opened with cold temperatures (20's), clear skies, and a slight ground breeze. By mid morning the day had turned almost spring like, with absolutely calm air, and pleasant temps (40's to 50's). Even the winds aloft were nearly dead-still as evidenced by the lack of drift on smoke plumes and Icarus flights landing withing sight of the launch pad. In early afternoon some very high, cirrus clouds drifted in and obscured the sun enough to cool things off for a while.