Flight

First flight came at the aforementioned launch at B6-4 field in November of 2013.  Except for the overcast, it was a perfect day to be flying.  The field was dry, the winds were almost non-existent, and my wife was out of town for the day.  The Skywriter was the third flight of sixteen on the day.  Since I had very little emotional investment in the rocket and conditions were perfect, I decided that it would fly on a B6-4 on B6-4 Field.  No worries about losing it because I still had four of them in the basement.  I loaded everything, put it on the pad, and readied the camera for the liftoff shot.

Got a little more than I bargained for.

The rocket had barely cleared the rod when the B6-4 detonated.  Parts and pieces flew everywhere.  The motor casing ejected straight back and rogered the blast deflector, breaking the standoff.  The nose cone and parachute continued skyward, eventually landing gently out in short-center.  The body tube cartwheeled to a landing near the nose cone, while the fin can landed in deeper center.  I gathered my wits about me and started gathering parts for the post-mortem.  The nose cone and parachute were undamaged, as was the elastic shock cord.  The body tube was a mess.  Everything inside was as I expected it to be, completely charred.  The tube just in front of the coupler is burned away so completely that all that is left is the yellow paper covering.  The sticker decal is blistered.  There is a plug of Kevlar, elastic, dog barf and the engine block at this point.  Everything is fused into a tight ball.  The centering ring/engine block, sewing elastic and Kevlar just crumble to the touch.  The lower section is more of the same.  The motor tube is charred through 3/4 of its diameter. I found the motor hook just before I left the field.  The top of the hook was almost straightened out.

Flight #2 was also a little more than I bargained for, but I had no one to blame but myself.  On a night when darkness was closing fast, I decided to try Sky Writer #2 on a C6-5.  Not sure what I was thinking, but it likely had something to with the almost complete absence of a breeze. The Sky Writer left the pad with authority and I found myself shocked at how high it already was when the flame disappeared.  I watched the overcast sky in the general vicinity of where I'd last seen it, counting to five and listening for the telltale blast of the ejection charge.  I heard nothing.  I waited a couple of seconds more and started watching the skies to the north, which was how the extremely light breeze was moving.  Still nothing.  I kept looking well past any reasonable possibility of the rocket still being in the air.  The chute was reefed fairly heavily, so it had to be down, and I eventually began loading another rocket.  That one would be an A8-3 flight.