Dearest Daughter:
This Sunday morning I woke up early. This is usual for me. Usually, I get up early to go to Buddhist services on Sunday. However, today I dressed in my DART T-shirt and loaded eight rockets and support equipment into the car. Your mom, just on the tail end of a cold, was so out of it, she couldn't drag herself out of bed, even when I gave her a second chance. That left me to attend the Fiesta Island DART rocket launch alone.
The Southern California weather was SUPER. I'll not give details, lest you who live in Connecticut grow green with envy. The rocket launches were even better than the weather. All eight rockets flew so perfectly, it was like watching three dimensional versions of the animations of Rocksim=99 computer simulations. With one exception, one- half of the Estes Flutter-by=99, the entire fleet flew straight off the pad and then floated nearly straight down.
The high point of my day was the 50-foot streamer I put in the Estes Eliminator=99. That bright orange streamer completely deployed, despite the fact that the large 31-inch long rocket which carried it was limited to less than 600 feet altitude on only a D12-5 engine. It took more than an hour to pack that rocket, all for a half-a-minute flight. However, the sheer beauty of that long orange streamer unrolling, unfolding, and then snaking down from the white clouds floating in the blue sky was worth it.
While you were home for the holidays last month we discussed when I would return to my fishing hobby. Today put that day off, maybe indefinitely. One day of rockets is worth many whole stringers of fish.
-.-. --.- -.. . Dad