There was a good turnout at the October 22nd, 2005 Amesbury launch. The regulars were there, along with some new faces. I personally launched four rockets, and assisted with a fifth.
First off the pad was my LOC EZI-65 with an Ellis H48-4. Let’s just say after that flight, Ellis motors were banned. The H48 did not perform as advertised, and the H48 had a very long delay. It was launched straight up, and crashed in somebody’s backyard long before the ejection could go off. The neighbors understood, but this incident was one of those things that I rather not had happened.
Once the ordeal was over, I launched my PML Bull puppy with a F40-4W motor. I had some trouble getting the rocket off the launch pad. I had the feeling that it was the launcher. After several tries, I moved the rocket to a high power pad, which solved the problem. Then I wanted to burn some Catocene, so launched my Aerotech Sumo with a H165-6 Redline motor. It landed on the other side of the fence on the side where the power lines are. I thought it landed right behind the bushes, but once I crossed over the fence and bush line, it was not there. There one place it could be. I walked to the river and guess what was floating in the middle of it? Yep. I waded into the water and got my rocket. The only thing that was not wet was the piston, which landed in a bush.
Being soaked up to my ankles, I decided not to load any more rockets and only fly the rockets I already loaded. First I shot off Cluster Bomb with a D24-4T. I was using an experimental igniter I made the night before. I made some nichrome free igniter that used graphite mixed in laqour to set of the magnelite pyrogen that coated it. They worked like a charm. Finally, I provided an E18-4W to a fellow rocketeer that wanted to fly their Pyramid with a composite E motor after several flights with D12's and E9's. The E18 was also ignited using one of my graphite igniters.
During this launch there were several E9 motors that catoed. The most common failure was the nozzle blowing off the motor, which resulted in the rocket toasting the blast deflector for several seconds. Bill Spadafora thought the problem was a combination of the soft clay of the nozzles, and people were using the White igniter plugs instead of the Black igniter plugs. The most spectacular E9 cato was a 24mm Deuce’s Wild, where both E9’s blew their nozzles.