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Quoted: Rediscovered model rocketry and forgot how much fun you can have doing it. Cheap fun with kids.  Estes kits are readily available for $10 or less, launcher kits are a one time investment of $20. http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/603/dsc05566u.jpg If you're really lazy there are some RTF ones available too. PULL |
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Cheap is relative.
I was a rocket fanatic as a kid, always had a stash of about 100 assorted "motors" on hand ready for an impromptu launch session. Plenty of A8-3, B6-4, C6-3, C6-7 and a few D12's. Price those now and they are expensive... OK so I'm living in the past, Remembering IMI/Samson 55gr .223 for $249 a box, WSP $8.95/K Or best of all the Reloader Special 4x 1lb H335, 1K WSR and 1K Winchester bulk packed 55gr FMJBT for $79.95 Bring back Reagan and the 80's! ( I'm going to feel old for the rest of the day now...)
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Haha.. I remember when I was about 9 my dad and I saw that we had rocketry coming up in our cubscout classes within a few weeks, so my dad went out and spent probably $400 on all the equipment (we needed  ) . Then we spent hours putting together a couple rockets and headed to the desert.The first engine we put in.. the weakest one: Fizzle.. nothing The second engine, another "weak" one: Fizzle.. nothing The third engine, a midrange one: fizzle... nothing By now we were kind of bummed because we followed all the directions, and nothing was happening. The third engine put put in.. the strongest, most powerful one the hobby shop had.. 3...2...1... FFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW It went so high, we completely lost sight of it.. then we saw the chute pop, and the wind caught it, so we hopped on my bikes and ran after it. After about 2 hours of looking through some pretty rough desert for it, we never found our mk1 rocket. But we went out probably once every couple months and shot them off for years. It was a lot of fun. |
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We shot the one in the picture 5 or 6 times with B6-4 motors before loosing it after a C6-5 shot. Didn't have an altitude gauge but the box said 1200ft with the B size so guessing 1600 at least.......chute deployed correctly and wind took it into the marsh. Already went shopping for some replacements  |
I remember a rocket I built that had a payload section(The Marauder IIRC). In the instructions it said specifically not to put living things in the payload tube. Way to give a 12 yr. old ideas. So every insect, spider, field mouse and salamander I could find took a ride. I think it's time to start this again. The mouse was a bit heavy though and once we let it out it didn't move from that spot for quite a while. |
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Quoted: Quoted: I used to fly mine at a local radio controlled airplane field. All of the old guys would panic as I set up my AA site! Good times good times...... This gives me an idea... I wonder if tannerite could be worked into the tip and explode on impact? I would dice up mylar balloons and fill up the parachute section with it to make chaff after reading about it in The Hunt for Red October |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
I used to fly mine at a local radio controlled airplane field. All of the old guys would panic as I set up my AA site! Good times good times...... This gives me an idea... I wonder if tannerite could be worked into the tip and explode on impact? tag for arrest, bail hearing, and destruction of private property indictment. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Rediscovered model rocketry and forgot how much fun you can have doing it. Cheap fun with kids.
Estes kits are readily available for $10 or less, launcher kits are a one time investment of $20. http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/603/dsc05566u.jpg If you're really lazy there are some RTF ones available too. PULL I was scrolling down and going to post that when I got to the bottom  
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I used to fly mine at a local radio controlled airplane field. All of the old guys would panic as I set up my AA site! Good times good times...... This gives me an idea... I wonder if tannerite could be worked into the tip and explode on impact? tag for arrest, bail hearing, and destruction of private property indictment. I wouldn't do such a thing... just thinkin' Quoted: I would dice up mylar balloons and fill up the parachute section with it to make chaff after reading about it in The Hunt for Red October Now that is a really great idea. |
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I loved my rockets as a kid! Oh, what I'd give to still have my Mars Lander!
I found a Saturn V kit back in the 80's and enjoyed every moment of building it. I took my sweet time and it was truly beautiful when I was finished...too good looking to risk flying. My son shamed me into it, though... Liftoff went well. Nice and slow, then building up speed...until it got about 50 feet up and hung a left. Oh, SHIT! Somehow it righted itself and gained enough altitude to safely deploy the chutes and land undamaged. That was it...ONE flight...my heart simply couldn't stand it after that.
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I was a member of the West Covina Model Rocket Society in the late 60's and early 70's.
NASA Goddard did a short film about us in, I think, 1969. This was serious stuff. We performed static testing, wind tunnel testing, and had advisers from local defense contractors helping us out.
The short film used to be up on youtube, but it's gone now. 
http://rocketry.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/video-on-model-rocketry-from-the-1960s/ If anyone can find the video, let me know. I'd love to get a copy. We had a launch site at a local park in the hills in the south part of town. After we burned the hillside down 3 times, they finally kicked us out and made us launch in the desert. 
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I've got two Estes rockets sitting about 15ft from me, my two sons (1 and 3) enjoy shooting them both off once every other weekend or so. The Converter is taller than they are when using all four sections, gets up to just under 1K' with a C6-3. The other one (Alpha III) gets well over 1.5K' on a C6-3.
Converter 
Alpha III 
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Quoted: Our rocketry days ended after we found a photo of a Bazooka and rocket. One trip to Home Depot, some kitbashing from our rockets, and we had a tube-launched rocket. Mom and Dad were nowhere near as impressed as we were. This is where its at. Made one for E size engines. they are 1" in diameter. 1" PVC was the launcher. I want to make another one now that I have some fabrication skills to launch a "rocket" with retractable fins. or maybe RPG style... CXS |
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Quoted: I've got two Estes rockets sitting about 15ft from me, my two sons (1 and 3) enjoy shooting them both off once every other weekend or so. The Converter is taller than they are when using all four sections, gets up to just under 1K' with a C6-3. The other one (Alpha III) gets well over 1.5K' on a C6-3. Converter http://www.billcooke.org/images/Fleet/Converter.jpg Alpha III http://www.billcooke.org/images/Fleet/Alpha_III.jpg This is the view about 10 feet from me on top of one of my gun cabinets:  ETA: Alpha III, FTW!! |
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Hi Power...the only way to go.
Old picture of me with one of my larger projects: 80% scale AIM-9L Sidewinder missle 54MM motor mount designed for K-J class motors 
Also had fun working on a project to get into the 770mph club by getting a model rocket to break into mach 1. Small rockets using a composite E class motor. Getting it up to speed wasn't the hard part, keeping it together and recovering was the tricky part. One of these days I plan on getting back into it, really enjoyable hobby. |
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IT IS NOT CHEAP!!
Maybe if you are using the smallest and second smallest engines, but i stopped when it got expensive, plus we couldnt find anywhere to launch them.. Which was when i was like 10. Me and my father built several from scratch, nothing special looking, but our best ones were 4-5 feet long, 4-5 inches wide and went on 3 C or D engines, i fogrget which ones. Man was that a blast! These things looked like cruise missles when they were flying! We had a couple that were 6-7 feet long, and very slim like 1-2 inches, and they would fly on one engine, but nothing like the 3 rocket ones. I must admit though, shoving a B engine into a small rocket meant for an A engine, and watching the thing go out of site is pretty fun, we did this once, and the parachute failed to open, and the nose was a good 3-4 inches into the ground! |