Flight

All flights were at B6-4 Field, the first being on Derby Day, 2013.  The B6-4 carried the Patriot higher than expected and on a dead straight path in the almost calm conditions.  The chute was an old 12" warrior that has a permanent residence in my B6-4 range box.  Unreefed, so drift was fairly excessive in the light breeze.  This was not a problem on this day as my setup in the SE corner of the field gave me the whole upper and lower field to use as a landing area.  The Patriot cleared the fence to the lower field, but wound up well short of the treeline.

Deck construction caused me to miss the National Sport Launch in 2013, but I one-upped them and hosted the International Sport Launch at B6-4 Field.  Crowds were sparse, but the newly lettered Patriot was one of the eight flights on the day.  The B6-4 flight was perfectly ordinary, straight up, straight down.  The chute I used was one of the $.10 chutes I got from Ebay several years back and worked perfectly, bringing the Patriot down for a damage free landing.  The previous flight saw it fail completely, costing me a fin on my Goony Vector G.  As I said in the flight notes "Something there is that doesn't love a Goony".

For the third flight I decided to go big and use a C6-5.  Three flights earlier on the day I had flown an Estes Amazon on a C6-5, just to see if I could do it in calm conditions.  The answer was an emphatic "NO" as the Amazon cleared the treeline and wound up somewhere in the trees surrounding the tennis courts where it could keep company with last years Estes Mini Max, a Solar Sailor, a cheesy foam Tangent, as well as several others.  Even with this flight still fresh in my mind I went along with the C6-4 for the Patriot.  I almost pulled it off.  At liftoff it kinked to the left pretty badly, but straightened out and recovered over the trees on top of the hill.  The flight was pretty high and on recovery the Patriot was drifting back my way and actually looked like it was going to land on the hill next to the pad, but again the breeze shifted.  It still almost made it down without a problem, but at the last second the chute caught a branch on the edge of one of my favorite rocket erating trees.  Caught it by this much.  A week later I happened to notice that my Astron Drifter that had been hanging on the phone line next to the field since April was no longer there.  I parked and walked back to find it on the ground at the base of the pole.  This made me think that I might have gotten doubly lucky with the Patriot also falling, but it was gone.  Hope it made some kid happy.