Eliminated

The launch team assembled at Red Run Park on Saturday morning to send up some rockets. We started off with Zach's red and silver kit rocket with a C6-5. It's a pretty heavy rocket for its size and never flies too high, perhaps 700 feet...but it was the first rocket the girls got to see go up so it was a good one to start with.

Next up came Jack's taller and higher-flying model, also with a C engine. That one drifted pretty far and ended up in a tree, required the old man who lived at the house to get out his ladder.

Next we set up the "Eliminator", our new purple and yellow screamer powered by the highest impulse engine Estes makes: the E9-8. As you can see, the E engine packs a serious load of propellant - compared to a C engine it looks huge.

And holy shit did that rocket go. I had imagined about a 50/50 chance that I'd ever see the rocket again, being that it's tall, aerodynamic, and powered by a huge engine. Well...

As soon as it went off I knew it was gone. I couldn't believe how far and fast it went up. I was clicking photos and in one shot the engine can be seen igniting, and in the next shot 1/5 of a second later, it was out of the frame already. By the time the engine ran out of propellant 2.6 seconds after launch, the rocket was already a tiny black spec in the sky, and it only went higher during the 8-second delay before the ejection charge deployed the parachute. It probably reached a height of 2,500 feet.

I saw the rocket after the chute came out, but only for a few seconds...I looked down and up again and it was in the clouds, never to be seen again.

Despite the loss, that was an amazing sight to behold.