The first meeting of H.A.R.T. in the second millennium was on a cold and windy day.

I was the first to arrive so I waited for some others to turn up, and soon after H.A.R.T. members Pete and Gary turned up with their friend Andrew.

We then both started to set up our launch pads and Gary was eager to fly and within a few minutes his first of many flights today was on his pad and ready to go.

After the countdown Gary's Big Bertha headed skywards and even though the wind was causing problems the rocket flew straight and made a perfect flight.

The rocket was recovered and Gary was quickly arming a new rocket and had his firebird on the pad soon afterwards.

This rocket also did a great flight and went very high on its C6-7 engine, the wind caught the parachute and the rocket drifted off a long way, but both Gary and Peter tracked it al the way down and soon Gary and Andrew started its recovery, and after a few minutes both returned with the rocket.

I was next to launch with my latest rocket to my fleet the Flash which I had built the night before, I armed it with an A8-3 engine for it's maiden flight and the rocket did a nice short flight and drifted over the pad and landed a short distance behind us.

Hannu and Paul then turned up with a fair selection of rockets and soon their pad was up and had a rocket ready to fly.

Paul's first rocket was a scratch built scale model of the Hellfire anti-tank missile, the rocket looked great on the pad, and looked just as good when it left the pad on its maiden flight.

Soon Simon Roberts and his son Timmy with his uncle Henry turned up with a few rockets and were soon helped to get the first few rockets launched.

Timmy first launched a Navy rocket on a B6-4 engine and after a long walk the rocket was recovered after a nice flight.

Pete then launched the most daring of the day with his Longshot on both stages of a D12-0 to C6-5, the rocket did a nice flight but kinked a little when the second staged lit.

After the 5 second delay a large streamer was deployed and soon the kids were on recovery duty again and both the rocket and bottom stage were recovered fairly quickly.

Henry launched his RTF Astrocam but it unfortunately ripped the parachute off as it deployed when the rocket was in a high speed descent

Hannu then launched a very nice Phoenix on a D12-3 and this rocket did a nice slow take off and great flight before landing softly a short distance down range.

Simon launched his Bullpup on a B6-6 and this rocket did a nice fast flight and was soon recovered by Timmy

The most interesting flight of the day goes to Gary when his launched his Prowler on a C6-5 engine, the rocket did a nice high flight before slowly drifting down and missed a few trees before being caught by a small tree.

In all we had a good day and launched 25 rockets.

9 people turned up, not bad for a day which was very cold and had a strong wind for the rocketeers to deal with.