Holtville Havoc II - March 3-5, 2018

Holtville Havoc II was supposed to see reasonable conditions on Friday, terrible conditions on Saturday, and brilliant conditions on Sunday.  I can attest that Friday amazed, Saturday was flyable until about noon, and I wasn't there on Sunday.  Here's a group photo and the rest of my photos from Saturday:

I had just one flight planned, on Friday, for this three-day event: the mighty CTI M6400 Vmax!  I had mostly prepped my L3 vessel, a 7.5" Nike Smoke, when I realized two problems with the reload.  The first was that the now aging resin, Dow PAPI 901 [polymeric with MDI], included with the reload was not curing from the day before.  It was thickening but not curing.  Secondly I could not fit the nozzle/liner/seal disc assembly into my Dr. Rocket 98/10240 casing.  With the forward closure fully threaded into the case I did not have sufficient depth to thread the aft nozzle ring into place.  Based on these two issues I scrapped this one flight so nothing to report here. I'll see what CTI recommends as next steps.  :(
     I was trying to get that flight out of the way on Friday to free Saturday for two L3 attempts.  Both Larry Hermanson and Cris Erving pulled their L3 flights together that morning because the weather was unexpectedly good.  Larry and Cris finished prepping at nearly the same time and got set up on the two 500' pads.  Larry was first with a CTI M1401 White which seemed successful.  Cris went second on an Aerotech M1500 Mojave Green and also ascended successfully:

Both flyers seemed positive on their way out to retrieve their rockets. Larry retrieved his first and was indeed successful.  Congratulations, Larry!  Cris took a bit longer to retrieve his.  Upon seeing his rocket I learned that his main had not ejected properly so he's going to try again in April.  Props for an amazing launch, all!