All Semroc launch - April 19, 2026

 Yep.  All Semroc, just like it said, but don't get too fired up.  

Yeah, it's a launch report, just not much of one.  Since my last flight experience, we've had nothing but rain, winds and family commitments.  I've made multiple trips to the field over the months, but every time the winds have been too much to tempt me to risk any of the birds that need air time.  (Hanging my DRM on the wire really had a bad effect on my nerve.)  
Last Sunday things looked decent, so I packed up and headed to the field.  The flags over the Birdcage were barely moving, but the flags at B6-4 School were flapping fairly steadily.  Down on the field things felt calm enough, so I decided to risk it.
First of all, I'm really rusty, and not only from a flight standpoint.  My camera skills are almost non-existent.  Granted, it's a cellphone, so at my age I'm probably not meant to be proficient, but I used to be at least serviceable.  
​​​​​​​First on the pad would be the Semroc ThunderChief on an A8-3.  If you aren't familiar with the ThunderChief, it falls somewhere between the Thunder Papoose and the Thunder Warrior in the Semroc Thunder family.  It's not quite BT-50, but not BT-20 either.

This was the flight that caused me to question my photo skills.  Actually, it might not be my photo skills that eroded, but my attention skills.  I'm doing three things with two hands, and I'm admittedly rusty.  As a result, I only managed two pics of this flight, both of which were as it was leaving the rod.

Pretty bad, as you can see.  To make matters worse, I obviously drifted so that the image was in the left hand corner of the video.  The flight was excellent, drifting back over my head toward the highway.  Having had trouble in that direction recently, I watched the flight instead of filming it.  I did catch the ejection and recovery.  It landed perfectly in the grass of deep 3rd/short left.

Flight #2, and as it turned out, the last flight would be the Semroc Nomad.  Last flown in 2020, it would fly here today on an A8-3.

I did a much better job of keeping the flight on screen for this launch.  Despite being set up with the same pad orientation as the ThunderChief, the Nomad left the pad at a much steeper angle toward the road.  It was also noticeably higher, topping out at 261'.

It was out over the parking lot at ejection, just like the DRM last summer.  It drifted back toward the field slightly so that it wasn't in danger of landing on the wire where the DRM nose cone still resides, but the tree, the one #@&%ing tree on the field was still in play.  It snagged in the branches ten feet up.  I got a pic of the landing spot relative to the DRM cone, but it's tough to pick out the Nomad.

The hill is fairly steep there, so I was able to reach up to grab one of the fins and untangle it from the tree, so it didn't suffer the same fate as the DRM.

Third on the pad, at least for a few seconds, was the Semroc S.P.E.V., another bird that hadn't flown since 2020.  As I was stepping back to get an on-pad pic, a sudden gust blew the pad into me.  I managed to catch it before the rocket was damaged, but no way was I going to risk it with winds like that.  I packed up and went home.

Today was the first WSR launch of the year on the G-motor and under field, but after a nightmare drive back from Atlanta yesterday, I couldn't harness the interest to drive an hour to Dayton for it.  If the winds are low enough in the morning, I might try again tomorrow, but depending on those winds, it might not be at B6-4 Field again.  Last week after I struck the pad, I took a drive and stopped by Moescher Field, where I occasionally flew back in 2001.  It had been taken over by one of the high schools as a home baseball/softball field, so launching was not an option.  They've since moved the high school field to campus, so it looks like a viable option 25 years later.  Fingers forever crossed.