Jan 12th of 2008 was the day of the second ever Winter Follies launch. The first Winter Follies in 07 I was unable to attend, but this time that Saturday was free, so I made the trip down to Acton, Mass. Like last year, the weather was unusually warm and hardly any wind. The only issue was we were walking on a thick layer of snow and ice. Other than the fact that my feet got cold, the launch was a blast. During the launch, I made about nine flights. I flew mostly low power rockets because the field in Acton is not that large. I started off flying two of my FlisKits Micro to the Max rockets. First was my Mudwasp. Even though this is one of the biggest of the Flis Micro Maxx rockets, I am surprised how high the 1/2A2-1 motor took the rocket. Then I flew my FlisKits mini Triskelion. Great flight but the tiny rocket broke up in several pieces when it hit the ice covered ground. I flew one more Fliskits rocket, my Paylord took off on a trio of Estes B6-4 motors. I flew two Estes rockets. My Firehawk and Bandito both flew with A10-3T motors. Both rockets are about the same size, and both performed nicecly. However, the Bandito was lost. I thought I saw it land next to a bush at the edge of the woods, but when I got there, I could not find it. How did I lose a black and green rocket on top of white snow? During the Secret Santa event on TRF, I received a Quest Icarus and a Semroc Oso. I hurried to have them built and painted before the launch, but because of time and weather, they were still in their initial coat of primer. My Quest Icarus took off with a Quest B6-4. Great flight and as expected, both chutes failed to deploy properly. Next time I will replace the two chutes with a single chute. Since Quest came out with the Oso, I have always wanted one. Now that I have one, I did not hesitate to give it a try. I chose a Quest B6-4 for this flight also. Great flight, but it did not go as high as I expected a rocket of this size would go. Next time I will fly it with a C6-5. No launch is complete without burning some AP. So I managed to launch two composite motors. I flew my Nebular Super Tube with an Aerotech E11-3 Black Jack which is one of my favorite motors to fly in these light weight large rockets. Then I brought out my PML Bull Puppy and launched it with one of the free F20-4W LMS I got from Just Rockets. Perfect flight and the ejection was on queue. During the launch, I took the opportunity to try out a cheap toy video camera I got at Target on clearance for $12. It did not work as well as I hoped it would. I also tried to fly one of those Air Hog Mini-Storm planes, but I could not get it to fly right. At full power, it could not gain any altitude.
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