First Flight!! Finally, I had some time this afternoon to take the Vostok out and launch it. I'd hoped to have the first launch of a few of my recent builds, but as the day turned out I barely had time to launch one. So I selected this one.
I packed the chute and inserted the motor and igniters at home and drove a mile down the road to a school ball field. The weather was perfect, no wind, so I didn't worry about losing the rocket to the trees. I also only used an A8-3 for the first flight since I wanted to make sure I got it back. Maybe eventually I'll send it off on a C, but today was a test flight for sure.
I took a couple of pictures pre-flight while it was on the pad.
And I even managed to catch an action shot of the rocket leaving the pad. This was not easy to do with the way that the digital camera delays after the button is pushed to take the picture. I got very lucky.
The rocket probably went about 200' high, or less, arced over and was heading down when it shot the parachute out. But it opened beautifully and coasted over to land on a small patch of gravel. 98% of the field was grass, but it landed on the gravel.
A brief inspection showed no damage, and I can call the first flight a 100% success!!
Maybe Saturday I'll take the Batman Hyper-Bat and the SR-71 back to that field for their first flights too.
I packed the chute and inserted the motor and igniters at home and drove a mile down the road to a school ball field. The weather was perfect, no wind, so I didn't worry about losing the rocket to the trees. I also only used an A8-3 for the first flight since I wanted to make sure I got it back. Maybe eventually I'll send it off on a C, but today was a test flight for sure.
I took a couple of pictures pre-flight while it was on the pad.
And I even managed to catch an action shot of the rocket leaving the pad. This was not easy to do with the way that the digital camera delays after the button is pushed to take the picture. I got very lucky.
The rocket probably went about 200' high, or less, arced over and was heading down when it shot the parachute out. But it opened beautifully and coasted over to land on a small patch of gravel. 98% of the field was grass, but it landed on the gravel.
A brief inspection showed no damage, and I can call the first flight a 100% success!!
Maybe Saturday I'll take the Batman Hyper-Bat and the SR-71 back to that field for their first flights too.