Now sporting a new magenta nosecone and reattached shock cord, I made two test flights of the Quest Astra I and its siren whistles. At the advice of Ethan, I wrote the rocket name down as "The Screamer" on the flight cards. With all the modifications this rocket has gone under since I bought the kit, it might as well be scratch-built. The first test was on a B6-6 and proved insufficient to get the whistles going.

The second test [the fifth flight of the day] was on a C6-5 and the whistles worked great! After the engine burned out, you could hear the bizzare whistling in the distance. Unfortunately, the shock cord snapped again and the new nosecone and old parachute floated off, never to be seen again.

I made another flight of the Estes Phoenix to get rid of a D motor that wouldn't light in two consequtive flights of the TAN-SAM last launch. The motor seemed to work fine, so I don't know what the deal is with my cluster launches in the TAN-SAM.

That same pesky fin that has broken twice before popped off again on landing, and somehow I failed to notice this when I picked it up and walked it back; Mikkel showed up with it sometime later having found it in the grass.

I'm rapidly running out of patience with these fins. I should either build another Phoenix with better fin stock, or refit this one.

My only maiden flight of the day was the Estes X-Ray. This was my first 13mm diameter rocket. Being the rube that I am, I failed to notice that this wasn't an 18mm rocket when I purchased the kit, and only when I sat down to build it last night did I realize it.

For this reason, I hadn't purchased any 13mm motors and had to trade a C6-5 to Doug Gardei for an A10-3T so that I could launch this rocket. I figure I'll buy a handfull of them for next time, so my other new 13mm rocket, the Gnome, will have to wait.

Anyway the flight was perfect. The streamer got a little toasty at the end, but otherwise everything was ok. The grass I stuff in the payload chamber made it through ok as well.

I made a flight with the Estes Echostar just to get rid of a lingering C6-0 I had. This being the last CMASS launch for several months, I was trying to get rid of my motors.

This was a freshly repaired Echostar after the separation last flight, and everything went great. There was a bit of weathercocking and the landing was a bit down-range, but everything worked well.

I've never had a problem with the staging on this thing. Strange that I have so many problems with the clustering on the TAN-SAM.

Speaking of which...

Welcome back the TAN-SAM, now with about 8" of additional body tubing justifying the name change to TAN-SAM XL. It is somewhat un-scale now, unfortunately, but it flies a lot more stable!

...even on one motor!

Still can't get this thing to light off both motors. No idea what my problem is. And I only got one shot at it because the glue on the forward bulkhead apparently hadn't cured yet, and the ejection charge destroyed it. No visible damage outside, just the mauled bulkhead.