At last year's inaugural launch of the new DARS high power site near Gunter, Texas, I had the pleasure of meeting Ted Mahler. We spoke for maybe 15 minutes, some about rockets, some about when he was teaching kids at Howe, Texas. He also told me that he was leaving Texas to take a job somewhere in the northeast, Maine, I think?

My son Charlie attended both Howe Middle and High Schools and still maintains contact with many of his teachers and fellow students. One of these students who was several years younger than my son was in Ted Mahler's 4th Grade Rocket Club. (Richard is now 28, so that would have been around 1995 or so.) Anyway, I have become friends with this young man and on occasion we light the candle on some of my birds in a huge, recently harvested crop field just across the road from his house.

I was surprised the other day when he pulled an old rocket out of storage that he had built some 19 years ago when he was in Ted Mahler's class and asked me if I could repair it for him so he could see it fly once more on something spicier than an A8-3. I just happened to have a three pack of B6-4's ready to go, and fixed it right up. (See pics.)

I also did a bit of Internet research and determined that this rocket was a Viper by Quest, probably part of an educators' pack. I found my reference after an Ebay search, which is all I could find anywhere. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Viper-Quest...D111001%26algo%

In the late afternoon a couple of days ago the winds died down to nothing so we stuck a motor in the old puppy and lit her up. She flew just like she was supposed to...maybe 700-800 feet and returned unscathed on a new orange nylon streamer, much to the delight of Richard and his lady friend.

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