That's a shot of the liftoff of club member Curtis' Level 1 Certification flight! The rocket was scratch-built by him. Yes, that used to be a child's crayon shaped bank. ;) It flew on a 29mm H-class motor to about 1,000 feet and was recovered in perfect condition as required for certification! He's already planning to fly the same rocket on an I-class motor. Heh.

The launch got started a little late so we didn't get to see too many flights. Just a quick low power flight, also by Curtis, and also a video-camera-equipped rocket flight by Randy, which ended in the destruction of the booster section (camera section was fine though!)

I'm definitely planning to have my PML Callisto ready to go for the next launch, for my L1 Certification flight. I'll fly it on a 38mm H123-class motor, and it'll fly to over 3,000 feet. Recovery should be... interesting!

This weekend we also started engaging in a new outdoor hobby. It's called Geocaching (click link for all the details you could ever want). Basically, you have a portable GPS unit (ones made for hikers and hunters and the like are best), and then a set of coordinates, and you go there, and try to find the container someone has hidden. Inside there's a logbook and sometimes objects you can exchange. It's pretty fun, and can show you areas you would never never known about. For example here in Lafayette in a wealthy subdivision, hidden by a lot of trees, there's a HUGE gorge spanned by a concrete bridge. Would've never known!

Sometimes the coordinates purposely don't lead you to the cache, and instead a set of clues are provided, which you have to figure out in order to find the cache. Those are very fun!

Geocaching is pretty popular; there are over 200 caches just in a 12 mile radius from our zip code, and we're not a "huge" metro area at all. I'll probably report in on particularly interesting ones from time to time.