We all met at the usual 'Stubbers' launch site, but found that it had been closed for the Christmas, and hadn't been reopened. So we ended up going back to our old Hornchurch Airfield launch site. There was no way that we would be asked to leave again, as the weather was too cold even for the Warden to come out!

About 9 or 10 of us turned up, including a couple of new members. Mike, whose idea it was to launch, decided that he wasn't going to come after all! Wimp! So there we were, freezing to death, with snow starting to fall, launching rockets, and generally looking like complete idiots to the few people that braved the weather to walk their dogs!

We only managed to launch a few rockets between us. Even then we had to borrow each others' launch boxes as the batteries were having a bit of a hard time with the weather so cold.

One of the new guys launched a Twister, which managed to bury itself in the ground 5 yards away from the launch site. It took all of us about 5 or 10 minutes to find it.

Each of us managed to launch about 1 rocket each before we gave up. None of them were lost, although a few drifted sufficiently far that it was difficult to gather enough courage to go an chase after them. We just wanted to go home!

The highlight of the day was the launch of a Thunderbird 1 replica, made from scrap materials (at least 1 yogurt pot in there somewhere!). This was launched on a C6-3, but also had a couple of MRC FX smoke motors, making for quite a spectacular launch. However it did not managed to attain much height, and tilted into wind, with the parachute deploying a good second before the ejection. It landed safely with no damage.

After that, we did go home! Back to Laurie's place for a very welcome cup of tea in fact! We watched a couple of rocketry videos, including our own Channel 1 Cable TV piece, and also the infamous Project 463.

Anyway, despite the sub-zero weather conditions, I think most people had fun!

Andy Moore - HART #008