Model Rockets....still good clean fun?

[The_Biased_Observer]

Looking to get a few rockets for spring break with the kids, been years since I've played with model rockets. I know there are some industrial size engines out there now but don't want the expense or hassle with those. That said, is Estes still a decent product?

I can remember as a kid wanting to launch various things, living and inanimate, to low earth orbits and see if they made it. :sarcastic:

My first inclination is to get some LED lights and attach those for nighttime launch fun.....Maybe a board camera and DVR?

Anything new that's worth looking at?

[montanadave]

Loved those rockets when I was kid. Couldn't resist so I had to check out the Estes website and guess what? Forty five years later they still make my favorite rocket:

http://www.estesrockets.com/rockets/001948-big-berthar

Sweet ride!

[Heavy Metal]

I just about took out a car downrange with a Estes Bomarc when I was 16.

[chadbag]

Yuo can actually get a fair assortment of starter and advanced beginner
rockets at Wally-world, and some Toys R Us and Target. I have some I got for my boy and we will be going out this Spring.

[Avenger29]

Yuo can actually get a fair assortment of starter and advanced beginner
rockets at Wally-world, and some Toys R Us and Target. I have some I got for my boy and we will be going out this Spring.

This. I did a lot of model rocketry when I was a kid, all started because of an Estes $20 starter kit from WM. Helped that we had our own freakin private airstrip, so plenty of room for recovery, and a fun thing to do was if the wind was blowing down the strip to see how far we could get a rocket to drift with the wind once the chute deployed.

About the only problems we had were several Estes C-class engines failing to fire the recovery charge and deploy the chute. The rocket turns into a nice little projectile when that happens, so watch yer head.

[Heavy Metal]

I learned to stick with the cheapies like the Alpha III's.

Too much pain to auger in a Skill Level IV or V.

[M4Fundi]

Loved those rockets when I was kid. Couldn't resist so I had to check out the Estes website and guess what? Forty five years later they still make my favorite rocket:

http://www.estesrockets.com/rockets/001948-big-berthar

Sweet ride!

I launched this one and another smaller one a few months ago. Great build project with the nephews. I laughed that they still have those miserable stickers you have to soak in water and then slide off and stick then wait to dry just like when I was kid.:D Thought they would of upgraded by now, but it did make me smile thinking about how many I tore impatiently trying to slide off too soon as a kid:p

As I recall we had one stuck in a tree for a month and removed it with a well placed shot from a Benilli into the chute. The frustrating part which I do not recall well, was that the chutes or cords are crap because of some law on flamability or something can't really remember what it was but we made a new chute from scratch and the rocket that was treebound for a month worked just fine. :)

[Thomas M-4]

I launched this one and another smaller one a few months ago. Great build project with the nephews. I laughed that they still have those miserable stickers you have to soak in water and then slide off and stick then wait to dry just like when I was kid.:D Thought they would of upgraded by now, but it did make me smile thinking about how many I tore impatiently trying to slide off too soon as a kid:p

As I recall we had one stuck in a tree for a month and removed it with a well placed shot from a Benilli into the chute. The frustrating part which I do not recall well, was that the chutes or cords are crap because of some law on flamability or something can't really remember what it was but we made a new chute from scratch and the rocket that was treebound for a month worked just fine. :)

What you don't like water transfer decals? I always found it easy to do if you had one of the tiny testers paint brush. The testers rockery always got me a passing grade in science class with all my female science teachers. When I got to HS I had to grade the classes papers with my male teachers :lol:

[rob_s]

We launched them a lot as a kid. My dad built his own launchpad, and even his own ignition box from Radio Shack parts (with two safety switches). We used to launch at the park next to the federal prison, and a bad wind carried one over the prison fence once. We left in a big hurry. I always wondered what the guards must have thought when they found it.

I have one now, and took the boy out with it once. We built the model together (it was a very basic one) and launched it a few times. The ignition box didn't work (of course) so we just stripped the wires and touched them to a 9-volt battery direct. Landed it on the tennis courts in the park which kind of screwed up some guy's obsessive Serena-making practice with his son, but they were cool about it. Probably need to get back out and launch it again.

Still having a hard time getting the kid into any of this kind of stuff. We got pretty heavy into RC too. He just wants to do the launching/driving and expects me to be the personal pit-crew on these kinds of things, which I'm not doing. The whole value of these kinds of hobbies is to teach kids that there's work involved in having fun. The boy is 14 in May and I suspect we missed the boat on that lesson.

[jmp45]

I revisited this hobby with my son years ago. It's a good memory regardless of not retrieving the rockets. Not sure where they ended up. 45 years or so ago too for me it was a big hobby, science fairs etc. I built 2 Saturn V's but never launched, I guess I didn't want to see them burn up after all that work.. I had one of the estes launch pads I purchased from a buddy for a buck or two. It was the red one with the batteries in the base. Never understood why the launch rod inserted into a swivel mount, it would occasionally tilt over and not at the best time. One launch I remember, it was a nike, the rod tilted just as I had ignition and it flew into the parking lot of the local shopping plaza. We found it under a car, luckily it was a miss. I still have a small payload rocket, probably an Estes. It was all about payloading small critters back then. Looking back though to the 60s as a kid what a wonderful time to be at that age. BB guns, launching trash cans with m80s, cherry bombs, u controlled gas airplanes, local slot car tracks and no bike helmets in sight. Reckless abandon ruled the day... Ok, I'm back... Yes, I'm betting it's still good clean fun..;)

[chadbag]

My uncle is the one who got me into it as a kid. I was mostly interested in the Century Rockets though I had some Estes as well (they were competitors then but compatible in terms of engines etc. Don't know if Century is still around).

I never did have a real launch pad. A few times we just used a battery and the igniters, but mostly just used a piece of piano wire as the launch guide and lit fuse to actually launch them. For my boy we bought a kit with the simple launcher etc. All the rockets he has so far are the prebuilt ones. I will get him into building them soon.

We launched one at a neighbors house (he had a lot of property by a pond). The thing came down in a small clump of trees that was surrounding a stream that came down into the pond. The clump was no bigger than say 20' x 20' or 20' x 30' but we spent hours looking and never found it. It was found years later (not in good shape obviously).

Don't get me started with R/C. I have a ton of planes and equipment and if I had the time would be out regularly. Have not gone out in about 4 or 5 years but have the itch to do so. Mostly slope soaring since around 1994 but I do have a gas power plane that is mostly flyable which I took out about 4 or 5 years ago and flew some. I need to get the boy introduced to this sometime in the next few years (he is 8 now).

[HES]

Cool subject. Last year we had our Cub Scouts make and launch rockets out of Estes kits. Tonight we start our Boy Scouts on a project using home made components to make rockets to launch. Launch will be in a week and a half.

[6933]

Had some good times building and launching. I talked to a friend recently that had built and launched with his son. He was excited and apparently everything went well. It was an Estes rocket so in the sample size of one it worked well.

[Skyyr]

I used to be big into these when I was a young teenager.

My crowning achievement was daring to build my own rocket design from a cardboard roll and some empty chapstick tubes (serving as makeshift engine retainers), one on each side of the roll. A premature ignition on one engine, followed by a delayed ignition of the second engine, caused the rocket to fly just high enough to where it cleared the guide rod, turn 90 degrees, then fly horizontal and almost take out my mom's pet chihuahua before exploding.

Thanks for the thread. I'm going to have to get back into it now...

[montanadave]

I used to be big into these when I was a young teenager.

My crowning achievement was daring to build my own rocket design from a cardboard roll and some empty chapstick tubes (serving as makeshift engine retainers), one on each side of the roll. A premature ignition on one engine, followed by a delayed ignition of the second engine, caused the rocket to fly just high enough to where it cleared the guide rod, turn 90 degrees, then fly horizontal and almost take out my mom's pet chihuahua before exploding.

Thanks for the thread. I'm going to have to get back into it now...

I detect a common theme. After losing interest in trying to carve a sports car out of a block of balsa wood, my next door neighbor and I decided to drill out the back to make room for a couple of rocket engines, glue some fins on it, and give it a test flight. With his dad running out the back door yelling "don't you dare launch that...", we touched it off, whereupon it spiraled across the yard, caromed off our fence, and took out the neighbor's back picture window across the alley, burning a hell of a nice hole in their carpeting.

Note to dads: If boys today are anything like boys forty five years ago (and I'm guessing they are), a little adult supervision might be in order. :laugh:

[dhrith]

Rockets are fun as hell
Should you take it as far as we did by dumping as much pyrodex into one as you can fit for an impromtu payload, just remember to keep the CofG behind the CofP. Or...was that vice versa...;p After clearing the pad it did a couple figure 8's, careened off the second story window and luckily was in the open away from anything, or more imprtantly anyone before lighting off. The neighbor lady across the street didn't seem to be as impressed as we were with our design. ;p Sure as hell made all my buddies scatter quick like though. ;p

[crusader377]

Loved those rockets when I was kid. Couldn't resist so I had to check out the Estes website and guess what? Forty five years later they still make my favorite rocket:

http://www.estesrockets.com/rockets/001948-big-berthar

Sweet ride!

Thanks for the link. Those rockets provided me hours of joy when I was a boy. I never see them at the stores anymore and thought they were no longer being made. Look forward in 2-3 years building them again with my daughter.

[rob_s]

I detect a common theme. After losing interest in trying to carve a sports car out of a block of balsa wood, my next door neighbor and I decided to drill out the back to make room for a couple of rocket engines, glue some fins on it, and give it a test flight. With his dad running out the back door yelling "don't you dare launch that...", we touched it off, whereupon it spiraled across the yard, caromed off our fence, and took out the neighbor's back picture window across the alley, burning a hell of a nice hole in their carpeting.

Note to dads: If boys today are anything like boys forty five years ago (and I'm guessing they are), a little adult supervision might be in order. :laugh:

In wood shop in middle school we made cars that launched with CO2 cannisters. The teacher had this long track, a device that poked holes in both cars at once, etc. The cars had tiny eye-bolts on the bottom to run on a string or a cable.

A week later at home I figured out that a rocket engine fit the hole perfectly. So I went and nailed some string into the street in front of the house, looping the string through the eye bolts on the car before nailing it down. Ignition, and the engine burned through the string and the car was airborn!

[jmp45]

I remember sending a model monkee mobile down the street. It went airborne and settled into a pretty good meltdown.