Welcome to the home page of the High Desert Rocket Society. We are based in Farmington New Mexico by the four corners of the United States. We are a small group that are into the design, building, and launching of model rockets from low power to high power. We have flown estes, modifies estes, custom, quest, launch pad, T.H.O.Y, and Loc precision, plus some of our own design. Once again, thanks for dropping by.
Launch date, March 26, 2000. The weather was near perfect, except for the wind. It was blowing around 10 to 15mph. Other than than that, not a bad day.
The first couple of launches were that of the quest Icarus and the quest Nile-k. These are both C powered rockets. Fun little sport rockets to start the day off. Both of these launches went as advertised. In fact the Icarus landed around 50' from the pad.
We only had three launches on this day due to the fact that the third launch went bad. It was that of the T.H.O.Y. Hornet. We sent it up on a G40-10. It exploded off the pad leaving a small crater underneath. We could hear the roar right up until the ejection charge went off. This is where the problem hit. Being the engine had a 10 second delay on the ejection charge,the rocket built up a whole lot of speed coming down. When the cute came out, The speed of the falling rocket tore the chute away. All we saw was the chute floating away.
We did a very extensive seach down range, but failed to find the rocket. This is a very big loss for us. Our LOC Norad did the same thing the launch before, but being such a heavy rocket, It came down quick and we were able to find it. Just a bit of advise if you are into the high powered rockets. Use stronger leaders from the shock cord to the chute, or shorter delays, but be ready to do some walking.
We would like to give a special thanks to the first and second grade students at Northeast elementery for having us over on friday the 24th for their yearly space day. We had a great time, and are looking forward to next year.
Till next time, Punch Holes In The Sky!!!!!!!!!!!
