The Whole Sick Crew

Well, it's possible I won't get to go launch rockets with the KCAR gang tomorrow at Shawnee Mission Park, but I'm loaded for bear and planning to go if at all possible.

The Midwest Rock Lobster fleet has swelled to nineteen rockets. Nine of these are virgins. There'd be ten new rockets except Hannah Montana, also built since last month's KCAR launch has been conceived, built, painted, flown and Bermuda Triangulated over Lone Elm Park's soccer fields right before the Soccer Mafia decided to pick a fight with me about who owns a city park and whether a kid could be bludgeoned to death with a paper towel tube.



Any endeavor can be compulsive behavior if you do it right. I'm becoming the rocket geek equivalent of that Catholic family in Monty Python's Meaning of Life who have to send their innumerable honyocks to 'medical experiments.' I actually have trouble remembering all these rockets' names.



Mr. Creosote, the big fat bastard with the tuxedo is easy. The red, white and black May pole looking one is the Tony G. The theoretically small one is the Jolly Green Giant (if a smaller rocket that actually flies can be built, I can hardly see how). Scribble IV, the Crapper, some of these are too easy. But Lola (the fluorescent pink and purple one); Buster (the dark green and white one); Peter Pan (the metallic blue and bright green one with the boat tail transition, named because according to Em he's the rocket that never blew up); Tubester (the green/purple job with tubular fins); Two-Da-Lou is the two-stage Echostar kit (dark blue, yellow and silver, with a payload section toting my non-business card); McRocket is the yellow one with red bands. And that's not all of them, though I think I eat least named most of the new ones here.

A lot of these rockets would not have been possible if it weren't for badly stocked hobby store. Hobby Haven at a hundred-something and Metcalf has body tubes, nose cones, centering rings and so forth for people who want to design their own rather than buying kits. But they never seem to order new supplies. Back in March or April, I told them the stock was pretty picked over. I bought some bulk tubing from Apogee components last fall and found some centering rings and such to complete rockets out of them but not everything I'd had in mind. The guy shrugged it off saying it was about time to order that stuff.



Probably once a month or so, I've been back. I've seen no evidence of new inventory, only a shrinking selection of stuff I'd seen last time. And every time I'd tell them their rocketry stuff was pretty picked over and generally got 'This time of year' as a response.

Well, if you're selling the stuff this time of year, maybe order some inventory?

So then I notice the centering rings are made by this Balsa Machining outfit. And I go to their web site and they have EVERYTHING. I mean, everything. More stuff than Apogee (though those guys are pretty awesome). Not so many pictures to go with the items, you kind of have to know what you want, but they've got it all. And here's the kicker: they sell to the public and at a third to tenth of the prices Hobby Haven charges. So I'm undercutting the brick and mortar store by buying online, but the brick and mortar guys got four or five warnings and ignored them. Plus, all my stuff from Balsa Machining arrived two days after I ordered it. I had a confirmation with a tracking number the day I ordered.



And BMS has a bunch of stuff I haven't even thought seriously about trying. Centering rings for multiple engines in a cluster, for a start. They also sell a lot of transitions to go from a large tube to a small tube, or vice versa, something I really like. Like the Great Pumpkin and Peter Pan, where you have a relatively large body tube tapering to a smaller one at the tail, though aping the tapers of a Delta or Saturn rocket is what seems to inspire the production of these things. Egg lofters are about the only kits I notice with the fat end first, though aerodynamically its a great way to go. There's less total surface area but plenty of payload room.