LDRS-23 - Geneseo, NY
Hosted by the Buffalo Rocket Society, Inc.

The "Away Cell" at LDRS 23

My very first LDRS.  What a hoot!

Western New York.  Heck, that's just a skip-jump away after some of the trips we've taken this year.  Other than our local club launches, this is the most local event we've seen to date.

There were a lot of people, though I was to learn that this was considered by many to be small by LDRS standards.  We had a lot of launch pads and a large field.  The only complaint that I would have is that the pads would be filled and cleared very slowly, taking an average of 1 hour and 15 minutes to launch one model rocket, so I didn't fly much.  Also, depending on who was manning the field at the time, there wasn't much interest or attention to the low power rockets, with the main focus on the HPR vehicles.  Understandable, I guess, at a high power meet.

As with all of the launches we attend, be they low power, high power, local or remote, the folks were fantastic.  There was a party atmosphere all around you.  Some folks were silly, others serious, focused on their latest project.  Vendors were hawking their wares and customers were scoffing them up.  Our first day we did very poorly in sales, but by the end of sunday we closed with our best outting to date while picking up a retailer/distributor in Sweden at the same time.

We had some hairy events too.  One of the wildest would have to be the grass fire.  It seems that shortly after launching a high power bird, a large grass fire was noticed downrange where the rocket landed.   This caused an imediate reaction by the folks at BRS to secure the area and douse the fire.  With a crew having run out to the fire to begin what limited control they could manage, trucks were filled with tubs of water and rushed out.  After a short span of minutes the grass fire was out and the area suitably soaked down such as to never burn again.  It was about then that the farmer came out to ask why we had put out the "Control Burn" he had just started...  After a short talk he understood and appreciated the care this group was giving to protecting his land and that he needed to inform us when and where he had a control burn taking place...

Other events that were cause for concern were when a bowling ball would detach from its recovery device.  Fortunately those were out over the field.  We also had a very large upscale of the Mosquito come in very hard in the parking area.  Fortunately no one and nothing was hurt other than the rocket itself.

I, on the other hand, had very good success with everything that I flew.  Some of it drifted further than I would have liked to walk, but other than that, everything went well.

Bottom line, it was a fun event.  I loved meeting up with customers for the first time, meeting new customers and old friends.   Being able to say hi to Ken Allen again, Doug Pratt for the first time (in person), Chuck, Justin, David, Drake (Doc), Tim Lehr (Wildman) and a whole host of others too numerous to list.  I am sure that the exposure for FlisKits was well worth the effort to attend this and other events.  But more than that, the exposure for *me* was priceless :)

Enjoy the photo album at the left.  Just click on an image to bring up a larger version in this frame.  If you see a picture that you would like a copy of, send me an email with the file name and I will try to get the full size image to you.  Also, I will be the first to admit, I don't know MOST of these rockets, the owners and certainly not the motors used.  I was shutter bugging and not taking notes.  If you know any of the information about any particular picture, please let me know and I will try to update the descriptions.

Thank you to all who helped to make this a successful LDRS!

Thank you to all the folks at BRS for a wonderful time!