Quote from Eric Becher on July 7, 2025, 3:33 pm

July 2025 Launch Report

Another pleasant day, albeit a little warm. Shade tents were the order of the day. The wind was up a bit too (when is it not!), but we played the lulls where necessary, and it turned out to be a nice day to fly.

Engine totals:

2 – 1/2A Engines
6 – A Engines
15 – B Engines
30 – C Engines
12 – D Engines
7 – E Engines
4 – F Engines
7 – G Engines
Total of 83 engines on 74 flights (Clusters and boosters, oh my!).

View Launch Statistics

Happy fourth of July! Happy Anniversary to the first Moon landings! Plenty to celebrate for this launch.

If you’ve never taken up the “Rite of Passage” that is building a Saturn V rocket, you might not appreciate the amount of work that goes into such creations. Many people like to add in their own little variations too, adding details or changing motor mounts. So on this day, folks were proud to break them out of their living room display cases and bring them to the field for a launch. There were a handful of Saturn V’s, from micro max to 1:70 scale. All beauties! But that’s not all. Mercury Redstones, Little Joe’s, and Gemini’s were there too, as if we had our own History of Manned Space Flight on display. Franz treated us to his version of the documentary series “From the Earth to the Moon”. You could have skipped the 12hr series and just gotten the highpoints from Franz’s flight cards. (But it is an outstanding series. If you have never seen it – you should.) Some Saturn V’s went up on single G’s, F’s, and C’s. Eric couldn’t make up his mind, so he sent his bashed Estes/Boyce 1:100 version up on an E12, plus 4 C5-3’s. It was fun to see and hear, even if the nose cone landed a little hard. (damage minimal)

And plenty of Red, White, and Blue rockets launched too, including Brian’s “Oh, Canada”. He missed the July 4^th assignment a little, but the rocket looked great. Sadly, it went back to Canada on it’s D12 and we never saw it land.

7 G motors is an unusually high count for our launches. They included Joe’s upscaled Quinstar, a future Jr. L1 cert rocket for Manav, the above-mentioned Saturn V, a big spool, and a couple of “normal” rockets from Brian (“Lotus”) and Oliver (“Sumo”). Big, loud, bright launches!

Speaking of Manav’s “Zephyr”, he built it for his Jr. L1 attempt, which should be coming soon. This day’s flight of the “Zephyr” landed a little hard from a tangled chute, but he’s taking the steps and making progress toward success. That’s how you do it! Good luck Manav! We’re all watching. (no pressure)

And Manav isn’t the only one going for a certification. Koushik is working towards his L2 certification. On this day he passed his written test with a perfect score. The cert flight is next. Koushik is trying to keep up with his son, Diptanshu, who is a well accomplished, award-winning rocketeer already. Good luck Koushik! Your son is watching. (no pressure)

Joe Z flew his upscale Quinstar twice on G’s. He also flew a drag race against Charlie’s Quinstar, (using original scale versions). Joe wasn’t as good in drag this day, as Charlie beat him off the pad.

And there were quite a few other flights, including stages, clusters, and new and old, large and small rockets. A few new folks joined us as well. Welcome! But as the heat of the day took its toll, the crowd dwindled until we closed up shop about 5PM. It was a good day of flying though, and we haven’t had too many of those this year.

Check out the Gallery. Lots of pictures, and I’m sure Joe will have his video up shortly.

This month we missed Joe K and Rocketship Games but we hope to see him in August. Browse his website and if you let him know what you need (by email or by order comments) he can bring it next time.

Also, next month is our annual picnic launch. There will likely be more food, pound for pound, than rockets! It’s always a fun day, so mark your calendars for August 3^rd. More info will be coming, including a signup sheet (via the CENJARS website forum) so we can avoid too much of this and not enough of that. Stay tuned!