This is my Hawk Mountain Enterprises Talon-3 rocket named "Back in Black", flying on an Animal Motor Works L-1300 engine at MDRA's Red Glare VIII event on April 17th, 2010 at approximately 12:30 PM. The rocket is 7 feet 6 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, weighing ~17 pounds loaded and ready for launch. It is equipped with an R-DAS altimeter and a 720p HD camcorder in the avbay and a BeeLine 433 MHz tracking beacon in the nosecone. This flight was successful despite some setbacks. The first occurred when the rocket was loaded onto the pad. When the altimeter was activated it remained silent - there was no initialization tone. The rocket was returned to the preparation area and disassembled for inspection. The cause was determined to be a bent terminal on the 9V battery. It had not snapped fully into the holder because of this, and was making contact only intermittently. I am SO glad it failed to make contact at that moment (when I switched it on). Had it made contact and I had heard the init beep from the altimeter the launch would have taken place, and I am convinced that the power to the altimeter would have been interrupted during flight - resulting in catastrophic loss of the entire rocket. After repairing the problem, the rocket flew successfully on the second try. The thrust curve says that the L-1300 develops more than 340 pounds of thrust for the first 1.4 seconds or so of the burn. According to the altimeter graph, this accelerated the rocket at more than 20G ...