I built this Estes Ventris mid-power rocket as marketing collateral for the release of The Extrapolated Man… but then the launch that year was called off due to high winds on Lake Louise. I did get to fly her in March of 2025 on an Aerotech F26-6J. The flight was perfect – a straight-arrow launch to about 1100 feet, clean ejection, good parachute deployment, and a gentle landing in the fresh snow that covered the frozen lake.

The experiment with this model was a baffle between the lower and upper body tubes, made by adding plywood bulkheads to the coupler. My thinking was that the offset holes would be sufficient to keep the ejection gasses from burning the parachute, and I was mostly worried about whether I had enough vent area to get a clean deployment. So… that was the reverse the situation. The deployment was fine, but the ‘chute got burned. What I should have done was dropped a stainless steel pot scrubber in the coupler. Alas. The model will fly with a parachute blanket henceforth!