Well, if you didn't make it, you missed some
spectacular flying at Whitakers this past weekend. I wasn't there for all of it but
what I did see was some of the best stuff Whitakers has ever witnessed. There
were no less than 5 M motor flights. Congratulations to Mark Lloyd on his successful
Level 3 certification. Jim Scarpine wowed the crowd again with another one of those
M SkidMarks. The echo can still be heard bouncing around out there.
Unfortunately, Jim broke a tree when his rocket landed in it. Jim Mitchell had a
stunningly beautiful flight on one of his own experimental L's. It was awesome to watch
his big yellow rocket streak through a cloud and arc out of
it for a perfect decent. Ben Russell experienced some unfortunate timing in a large
cluster when the outboard J's lit after burnout of the main motor. The last anyone
saw of his rocket it was headed for the outer banks. Mark came back after his
certification with an experimental M that cato'd about 100 feet in the air. He came
back for more with a beautiful L (I think) in his V-2. It took some hiking but he
got everything back all right. Another spectacular flight was staged by Doug Pratt
who flew a hybrid L that literally whistled on the way up. We opened an extended AGL
waiver window to 12,000' for "John Doe" to make a minimum diameter K550
altitude attempt. The rocket's performance exceeded all expectaions and it went
extremely...umm .... er.... well... let's just say it went very high and leave it at that.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent. There were a whole bunch of
other interesting flights but I didn't take notes so I will make this article short to
keep it as factual as possible.
One other significant event occurred that I wanted to mention. Walter O'Neal
(the land operator and our host for these past 3 years) took the microphone at the LCO
table to address the crowd. He was kind of choked up when he said it, but he
wanted all his rocket friends to know how much he and his family appreciated the
help we gave them after the hurricane and flood. He told me
our gift would enable them to buy the carpeting they needed for his daughter's home.
She and her family had been living with Walter and his wife since their home was
flooded with 5 feet of water in the hurricane. As a result, his daughter, son-in-law
and new grandbaby would be able to move back into their house much sooner than
anticipated, although Walterthreatened to keep the grandbaby! To me, that was the
real highlight of the weekend.
Based on the launch cards and registration form, here are the statistics from
the October 22-23-24 launch that was a combined certified and experimental affair:
No. of flyers: 36
No. of flights: 166 (28 exp., 138 cert.)
Motors burned: 179
1/2 A: 3
A: 6
B: 11
C: 22
D: 15
E: 12
F: 13
G: 20
H: 34 (13 exp., 21 cert.)
I: 15 (3 exp., 12 cert.)
J: 11 (7 exp., 4 cert.)
K: 9 (6 exp., 3 cert.)
L: 3 (3 exp., 0 cert.)
M: 5 (4 exp., 1 cert.)
See y'all next time!
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