This flight be lookin' like me last flight o' t' day, so I called upon t' venerable Nike-X with an Iris payload. This rocket never disapoints. Well, blow me down! I was anxious t' try out t' newer and lighter "Top-Flight" nylon parachute. Aye aye! (Find them on LongJonRocket.com) Very well built, very light and "un-sticky" cloth, me bucko, and the colors are really nice too!  I also doubled t' length o' t' shock cord t' prevent those snap-back dings I always seem t' get.

So I lit t' motor which burned for 2 seconds with a nice slow liftoff o' this fairly heavy bird. Avast! T' average acceleration was only 1.9Gs, and peaked at 7.2Gs. It reached a top speed o' 83 mph, arrr, then coasted up for another 3.2 seconds. T' ejection was about a half-second early, at 346 feet, so it only reached an apogee o' 362 feet. A C6-5 would have been better with this model. Begad! T' model then descended under a full canopy at 6 mph. T' flight was over in 43.4 seconds. A fun flight t' watch and a fair sucess. Avast, me proud beauty! Only issue I found be a bit o' singe on t' parachute but nay enough t' need replacing. The Nomex cloth I was usin' t' protect t' chute seemed a bit small for this BT-55 body diameter (3"x3"...as recommended by t' Apogee website I bought it from.) While t' 3x3 is only 1.7 grams, t' next larger 6x6 is almost 7 grams - so it's a judgement call.