"I am pleased to report that Cyclone II performed flawlessly at the BARC launch yesterday. Don't have any pics yet, hopefully soon.
First launch was on an 1/2A3-2T. It didn't go very high, but high enough to get a good long spin coming down. As promised, the booster unit spins down moderately, while the mapleseed part gets up a pretty good rate of spin and comes down slowly.
Given the huge flat recovery area, I got ambitious for the second launch and stuck in an A3-4T. That got some good altitude, and a nice long spinning descent. Unfortunately I made a stupid mistake and watched the final descent of the booster piece while asking others to keep an eye on the mapleseed. They *all* lost sight of it, so after some searching I was becoming resigned to having lost it, until some time later my Dad located it somewhat further away that I imagined it could have traveled. So thankfully it's all back together safe and sound.
The takeaway: in the future I personally will focus exclusively on the mapleseed part, and not trust anyone else to follow it. The booster unit doesn't drift that far and should be easy to fine. The A3-4T was a great engine for a launch at a large club field, with easy recovery areas, but for smaller fields definitely the 1/2A3-2T is plenty.
All in all a very fun rocket, I look forward to flying it some more."
Great to hear Neil!
I've seen a Cyclone spin and drift out of sight on a A3-4t before.
At my local soccer field launch I had a prototype drift and land in someone's back yard on the 1/2A3-2t.
Definitely keep an eye on the upper half. The lower half tends to land much closer.
I'm happy to hear of your success, many are surprised how well it helicopters in with no real moving parts.
