Ode to a Favorite Rocket

One of the best rockets I ever built was only flown once before it was lost forever. Maybe "lost" isn't exactly the right word, since I knew exactly where it went. Perhaps "unrecoverable" sums it up better. But let me back up a bit...

In the mid 1980's I got a Black Brant II from that legendary company, F.S.I. The Brant was designed to take either a black powder F-100 (boom! It's in the sky!) or an F-7 (9 second burn "steam machine") The size of the model coupled with the performance of the motors insured a great show- no matter what the results of the launch (both motors were prone to catos).

I built my Black Brant with great care...even going so far as to use tiny screws on the payload section. She was beautiful. Then came the time to launch her.

The day was overcast. I posed my model next to an Estes version for scale, and then selected sn F-7 for her maiden flight. I pulled the trigger on my camera a little early when she lifted off, due to the super slow motor, but that allowed me to advance the film and get another shot as she lumbered into the sky! The parachute deployed perfectly, and then disaster struck!

There was a government contractor that had a building on the land we flew on. Usually, that was no problem. However, today, my bird decided that the roof was a great landing site. It touched down and I never saw it again.

I contacted the security people at the facility, but I never heard back from them. My beautiful Black Brant was gone forever.
Here are some pictures from that day...

The FSI bird was just enough larger than the Estes bird to be really impressive!

Launch! F-7's fly slow...

An FSI Steam Machine in action! Also, the last ever picture of my Black Brant...

The model in the 1988 FSI catalog...

So you may wonder why, after all these years, I'm bringing up this story. Well, as it turns out the wonderful folks at the new FSI are releasing this model again! Yes, please! I plan on getting one of the first ones out and defeating the curse! I'll keep you all informed of how it goes!

Until next time, fly 'en fast and high!