Originally Posted by caheaton

Was itching to get in a little flying, but no time to head to the local park as it was around 8:30PM. So, I decided to just fly the little Estes Fat Jax from the backyard (I'd initially bought it as a backyard flyer, but to date it had only flown from the park).

First two flights were with 1/2A3-2 motors. Estes says to use 4 second delays, but the sim shows an ideal delay of 2.5 seconds. Looked to be a good choice. Rocket was pointing up at ejection but didn't appear to be travelling too fast. Parachute ejected and landed about 15 feet from the pad on the first launch and about 25 feet on the second launch (which was noticeably higher than the first despite using the same motor). The sim on this motor claimed it would be around 100 feet and that looked about right.

My wife wanted to see another launch, but at this point I didn't have any more 1/2A's in the range box, so I chose my last remaining Centuri motor....a 45 year old 1/4A4-2. This motor made for an interesting flight....the rocket climbed to maybe 35 ~ 40 feet with chute ejection after apogee but not too much after. It landed about 8 feet from the pad. Despite the low altitude it was a very satisfying flight :-) . It will be interesting to see how it performs on an Estes 1/4A3 motor....(though I wish those were 2 second delays rather than 3).