October 18, 2014 Amesbury-Never Say Never

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Published: Sunday, 19 October 2014 10:57

Written by Bill Spadafora

Trying to decide to hold the launch on Saturday or Sunday was a bit of a dilemma. The forecast for Saturday was relatively warm with a chance of showers and for Sunday it was colder and very windy. The morning WBZ forecast downplayed the rain so I decided to go for it. At lunch time I was feeling proud of myself for making that call. Then it started to rain with just enough thunder to make it interesting. The picture on the left shows the crowd in the  CMASS shelter (trailer). But being the steeley eyed missile men we are, we waited for it to stop and started flying agin. Then it started raining again, we paused until it stopped and started flying. Around the third rain/flying cycle someone mentioned that it would be a good day to fly a sparky. I okayed it and Jim Salem quickly scurried to the AMW trailer to buy one and it flew. There is photographic evidence in the gallery. We stopped stamping the flight cards at around 100 flights because the cards were too wet. We had somewhere between 150 and 200 flights including a couple of successful and one almost successful certification flights. I think we were off the field by 4:00 but not before getting wetter when it started to rain as we tore down the range.