The weather forecast for Saturday’s launch at Creekside Farms in Taylorsville was amazingly accurate, as setup of the range occurred in freezing temperatures, but things warmed up by afternoon, the sky was mostly clear and the winds were mostly still, leading to a great day of launches.

Part of the launch site had been a firing range, but that part recently closed. However, SoAR brought out the big guns. First was Kyle Newman’s very nice and large Little Joe II that lifted off with a scale seven motors, a K711 and six G40’s for a total of about 3100 newton-seconds of total impulse, which made a perfect flight and was “caught”, in future SpaceX Starship style, by the finger of trees in the middle of the field, and was easily retrieved by Jorge with SoAR’s trusty fireman’s pole.

Later, Creekview High did a little practice with their K1085 rocket for the NASA Student Launch Initiative, sending it to more than 4500 feet, though it landed just off the property when their main chute couldn’t wait and opened at apogee.

Kevin Scholberg, as usual, had the most flights with fourteen, including two of the Estes AirShow, the second of which had both gliders operating perfectly, two of a very pretty rocket named “Mostly Peaceful”, and a flight of a PML AMRAAM 4″ on an I180. David Waln flew (and thought he lost) an ASP Corporal on a D12 (David, Roy has your rocket). Jim Henson tempted fate, taking advantage of the large field with two flights of his Commanche III 3-stage rocket with a D12/C6/B6 combination. He got it back the first time, but the second time saw the upper stage heading swiftly to parts west.

Bob Nowak was worried about the trim on the glider of his Hawks’ Hobby Super Orbital Transport, but it detached from its booster smoothly and had a leisurely flight down from orbit. Speaking of gliders, Mark Bowen, flew a DynaSoar Aurora rocket glider via radio control for a very nice flight. And Ray Lecture flew something that should be using its wings, but doesn’t, a scratch-built SR-71 BlackBird on a G138 for a flawless climb into the sky.

There were twenty-nine flights using the much-maligned Estes E12 motor, but all twenty-nine motors worked flawlessly. The only two motor failures all day were an E9, and a composite reload motor that had a forward closure failure.

Kevin Boyd’s photos are great as usual. And we have some other photography and videos to share shortly. The image above is from Kevin, and shows Katie Isdell’s “Traffic Cone” which made a perfect flight on an I284.

The final flight of the day, when all spectators had left but one family patiently waiting, was Kyle Newman’s Honest John on a J350.

Here are the motor counts for the 134 total flights (Motor counts are higher because of clusters and multistage flights).

A	2
B	14
C	33
D	21
E	41
F	9
G	19
H	7
I	5
J	1
K	2