Airfest 27
September 9, 2021
Airfest 27 was a great weekend, as Airfest usually is! The weather wasn’t ideal the whole time, but there were pleasant temperatures and a great turnout of people producing sweet flights.
I was going to take Friday off work to get my flights done with early on, and then volunteer for the remaining days. However, with forecast rain for much of the day, I decided not to burn one of my few vacation days and instead attend Saturday. There was still rain for much of the morning Saturday (no need to volunteer), so I sat in my car reading and watching downloaded YouTube videos to pass the hours until the range opened. Around 13:30 the Estes pads opened, and by 16:00 the skies opened enough to the full waiver.
I volunteered as Pad Manager for the final 16:00-18:00 shift, by which point Sam and Kenzie joined me at the Rocket Pasture to camp out for the evening. We pitched our tent and socialized with the Kloudbusters until turning in for the night. It got down into the low 60s that evening, but unfortunately nearby generators ran overnight and 3 local farm dogs spend the whole night running and barking through the Pasture and even pouncing on our tent trying to get in. This went on almost every hour all night, so we didn’t get much sleep.
Thankfully the weather Sunday was gorgeous with light winds, clear skies, and temperatures in the low 80s. I Pad Managed from 9:00 to noon, and then finally got to fly some rockets of my own. There were no sparky motors this year due to milo being grown in the fields east of the Pasture, but I had some other flights planned. I flew Miss Kenzie on a J460T to test out my new TeleMetrum and EasyMini. I then launched my first-ever minimum-diameter rocket, Star Cruiser, on an H123W and used fly-away rail guides. There were some telemetry overlap issues while on the pad, and the main didn’t deploy, but it landed undamaged, so I’ll fly it again this fall.
It was late in the afternoon by this point, and Sam wasn’t feeling well, so we decided to skip camping a second night to return to Wichita at the end of the day. I tried to launch Easy on the Wallet Too to test out my Eggtimer Quantum, but after 3 failed attempts to light the motor, I gave up. I ended the day with a good third flight of Thrice as Nice on a cluster of 3 G53FJs.
We were glad to return to Wichita that same day and ended by getting Taco Bell as is tradition after these 5 years in high-power rocketry! Thank you very much to the Kloudbusters for hosting this event, and we already look forward to next year’s!
