Flight

Despite the mile square field at VOA, I was leery of putting too much motor under the Sky Hook for the first flight in March of 2004.  It was a fairly breezy day, so I loaded it with an A8-5, which turned out to be more than enough motor for conditions.  The flight was fairly straight considering conditions, and quite high considering it was only an A8.  It was nosing over when the ejection charge fired, and the mild bit of windcocking it did was obviously not going to be enough to cut down on my recovery hike.  It recovered over toward the ski-hill at the west side of the field.  I got a bead on the spot and began marching, surprising myself by walking almost right to the Sky Hook.  A reefed chute might have been a good idea, but the chute was one of the first Semroc chutes I had and I couldn't bring myself to cut it up.  All things considered, this could have easily been a streamer flight.

The second flight was on a B6-4 and was quite an eye-opener.  Chan Stevens and I were flying a bunch of rockets for review and had picked a cold, clear, largely windless day to do our flying.  I say largely windless because the Sky Hook managed to catch the one good breeze of the day.  The B6-4 flight was quite high, and made me realize that I stood little chance of getting the Hook back if I chose to fly it on a C6.  After a high, straight flight the Hook caught the breeze and was carried to the very edge of the VOA field.  I started my trek thinking that I was going to stand very little chance of recovering the rocket, and several times considered calling off the search, but the line I'd chosen took me almost right to the landing spot, albeit a lot further than I'd initially thought.  As I remarked in my flight log, I felt priveleged to get it back.

The third and unfortunately final flight was on a surprisingly warm Saturday at B6-4 Field in Ft. Thomas, just a couple of months after we'd moved into the neighborhood behind the field.  As usual, the sound of rockets drew a crowd, and I wound up with several of the neighborhood kids who took turns punching the button for me and served as my recovery crew.  I chose a B4-4 for the flight, obviously having forgotten the height attained by the previous B flight.  The flight windcocked fairly severely over the country club, but was descending nicely and looked like it was going to drop right on the infield of the ball diamond.  Then came the rogue thermal.  One of my ground crew had run over to what looked like the landing zone, but the rocket suddenly began rising.  He blindly ran along under it, and was close to running out into traffic when I yelled and stopped him.  We watched the rocket rise, eventually attaining greater height than the flight had, all the while drifting in the general direction of the river.  It appeared to still be rising as it disappeared over the YMCA.  I ended the day explaining what a "thermal" was.