We launched our 1/2 scale on November 26th with an H motor so we could get licensed to get larger motors. We were originally supposed to launch on the 19th, but it hasn't rained in North Carolina for a while, and there were a lot of forest fires in the mountains (it got a bit smokey around here for a while), so there was a fire advisory and the launch date got moved. I got lost driving over there because some new neighborhood decided to name one of its streets the same name as the launch field, and my GPS is stupid (I'm a little bitter about it). The launch went well though; the only problem was that our delay was set too early. The delay is how long it takes for the ejection charge to blow out the parachute for recovery; we had our delay set for 7 seconds after launch, but that apparently wasn't long enough. We launched at the ROCC launch site, so in the video below you can actually hear the announcer discussing our delay time. Our rocket went up to 1365 ft this time (about what we predicted with our drag coefficient).

Anyway, here's the video of the launch. Michael took the video, so it's his voice you're hearing in addition to the announcers.

And if you get far enough into the video you may hear the announcer say that we have burn holes in our parachute. We DO NOT have burn holes in our parachute. We just have a cross shaped section over the hole in the parachute from when we made the hole too big originally (I talk about it in a previous post).

I also have some pictures from the launch. Here's the one I took of Michael and Doc Russel (the guy helping us with our licensing) before my phone died (I used up the battery on the useless GPS).

And here's two pictures of Michael and I with the rocket (we were the only two people who could make it to the launch).

If you want to see more pictures of the rockets that were there here's the link to ROCC's gallery for that day. There's actually a picture our our rocket there at take off too.

Currently we're arguing over what we should do for our level 2 launch. Our choices are basically between buying a kit, making a 3/4 scale version of our rocket, and making our full scale rocket. Liam wants to make the full scale, but the problem is that for certification we'd probably be flying it on a J motor. The impulse for J motors varies a lot though, and our final scale can fly with a powerful J motor, but not with any of the less powerful ones. I don't think we've reached a decision yet. Other recent developments include us being told that we can actually ask for money from the school (up to $1000) for special circumstances once per SGA treasurer (SGA is the group of people in charge of student organizations at Elon). It's not enough, but it's something. Also, the people in charge of our budget finally realized that it would be cheaper to rent an RV to get to New Mexico than it would be to fly there and rent hotel rooms (shocker). I've been telling them that this past year, but no one listens to me.

That's basically it for what went on with our launch and for our future plans. What follows is just some... interesting things about what happened at the ROCC launch site. It's not really necessary information to include, but I will anyway.

To start, two rockets CATOed (catastrophe at take off). One blew up on the launch pad. The other one had 3 F motors clustered; two went off and the third one didn't. It spun around on the ground and attempted to make its way towards the crowd of spectators. There were also a few that nose dived into the ground. The guy who collected one of the CATOed rockets actually was missing most of the fingers on one hand.

We also met a women there who wants to start a company that supplies equipment for yoga. She was wearing a necklace with the Sanskrit writing of Aum (or Om depending on how you want to spell it) and also had the symbol in Henna on her hand. She told us all about a Hindu temple she visited in the mountains for a yoga retreat. She showed me a picture- the temple looked like a giant lotus flower. Apparently it's a good price to go for the weekend, and she had an entire experience with driving there and worrying about deer. She left later in her SUV with lots of peace and love bumper stickers, blaring Jamaican music out of the windows. Michael said he liked her music choice. I always meet interesting people when I go to launches.

The rocket vendor also apparently has a lot of interestingly shaped parachutes. He took out one that was shaped like a large rocket, and began laughing and skipping around with it yelling, "Of course it's a rocket, you perverted people!" This is the man we buy high powered explosives from. Fun Fact.