TSM Launch - April 26, 2014
The April launch was quite a blur, many rockets, people, and covey of flights for a early season launch.
Some engineering students from Iowa State made it up to Maple Island to try their hand at level one certification. Overwhelmingly, they did great and 11 students made L1 certification - good job! The standby rocket of choice for the cert flights was the Jart by Wildman Rocketry. The birds were left with most of the airframes unpainted, which made recovery somewhat problematic with the black airframe against the rich soil of Maple Island. At days end however, 11 made it back to the range head and got the thumbs up for certification.
| Level 1 Cert |
| John Nagel |
| Aaron Forest |
| Logan Briggs |
| Kyle Gansemer |
| Austin Thielmann |
| Prince Mazlan |
| Kevin Knirr |
| Matt Miller |
| Kyle Suther |
| Jeff Schmit |
| Spencer Dewalt |
Mark A. had a quadcopter at the launch and took some great footage with the help of John S. Mark caught Carl's M motor flight. The flight was text book perfect and awesome!
Quadcopter view of TSM launch site
Two members of TSM look to possibly launch every motor size from A-M at Maple Island this year, Carl H. got to a quick start with his pegasus, but at the days end here was his fare of successful flights:
| Carl H. | ||
| M1297 | Pegasus | April |
| H123 | 1/4 scale Patriot 'naked' | April |
| F42 | Abreviated Baracuda with Leds 'winky' | April |
| E30 | Dynastar Rising Star 'blinky' | April |
| D12 | Estes Hi-Flier XL | April |
| Andy L. | ||
| I140 | Moooovin | April |
| H128 | Paid Assasin | April |
| F68 | Arreaux | April |
| A8 | Mongoose | April |
Craig K. had his Packers Graphics out for a flight on a G motor with his famous launch angle and also the TSM famous Manly with the expected singing card - I was out recovering my Tux rocket at the time Manly was flown so didnt catch the card phrase this time - hopefully Manly will fly again before the end of the season and the card will indicate what Manly thing we will have to do!
Jerry had his Sandhawk out for a great flight on a sparky motor. Warren had the Astrobee D at the launch with a H180 motor sim'd to 3100 feet.
Craig N. went with 3-letter birds, his NOS and PVC. PVC was sim'd to 4,000 feet which was pretty aggressive for altitude on the mostly cloudy day. I do believe both were recovered and should expect them back at the range in the future.
Scott's upscale Alpha was captured on film with a nice smoke plume at takeoff. Scott's Expendable had recuring ignitor issues but I believe she finally made it into the sky before the end of the day.
A rocket near and dear to me is the LOC IROC and Ron had his IROC Ron-John take flight on a 14 year old motor - Yipes!
Alex E's Honest John took flight on an H motor to 2000 feet in a possible cert flight but the HJ experienced some ill faited issues with terra firma - lets hope Alex gets back with a successful cert soon!
Quadcopter pilot, Mark A. had one flight with his Cheetah sim'd to about 2,200 feet on a F20.
With the large number of flights and visiting students at the April launch, it was quite a blur and post launch, the crew headed to Bruno's East for a little cheer to end the day of a very nice start to the 2014 flying season.