(Saturday, October 23, 2010 – Ray Harmon Flying Field, Aurora, OH)

First, I must say that having the on-board cameras have really added a new dimension to the rocketry hobby!

Saturdays flights involved two rather successful flights of Perseus X4 “Columbia”, and four wonderful flights of Aurora X5 “Omnia”.

Columbia flew its first mission launching the static weight of the Dual Deployment system currently under development.  The purpose of that mission experiment was to complete a failed test from Perseus X4-03 to ensure the Perseus design is capable of successfully flying the full weight of the dual deployment electronics.  THe flight was a low altitude one on a D12, which reached a height of around 300 feet.  The launch test was a complete success.

The next flight was a camera test launch.  That one was also a success.  Launched on a D15, Columbia reached an altitude of 419 feet.

Aurora booster Omnia’s launches were just as successful!  One of the high points of Omnia’s missions was a dual launch where the on board camera captured the launch of one of Mark Recktenwald‘s rockets for a few moments.  Definitely worth checking out!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V54u2t2g7I

We have a neat video of the launch of the last flight of the day for Omnia.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljEmP0CdLRQ

And Columbia’s test flight to 419 feet with the onboard video camera.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quuq85T6vrU

We’ll have a followup post on some of the other items under test during this weekend’s launches as we analyze our data.

((( )))