Recruiting a New Rocket Lobster

So when I took Mo to the KCAR club launch last summer there were a bunch of kids about my nephew's age who were just out of their small minds over the whole scene. Great thing about a club launch, there's dozens of rockets and not much lag between flights.

This is important when you're dealing with attention spans that are measured in nanoseconds.

All that cemented my plan to get rockets for my nephew. I'd meant to do it for his fifth birthday but that didn't happen. But Christmas, I got him a pretty much ready to fly setup so I wasn't roping my brother into much of a modeling project. Found a kit that came with two rockets, a bonus given how easily they're lost (I hadn't realized how easily they're damaged by excited five year olds, but there's that on top of the loss factor).

I got out to the park and got set up a few minutes early, figured it'd be good to have stuff ready to go when the lad got there. And that was smart. He's a funny kid, wanted to 'save' his second rocket rather than fly it that day. Me, I want to fly all my rockets multiple times when I go flying, so I'm not sure what was up with that.

I didn't get to fly Claude the Impaler, my lobster-claw-finned rocket. He's too heavy for a 1/8" launch rod, and his launch lugs are too tight for a 3/16". I think I can fix that by sanding out the lugs, wrap some sandpaper around a 1/8" rode and slide it through there for a few strokes.

I think Mo enjoyed the launches, too. She pushed the button for a few without hesitation, and one thing you can trust her to do is not participate in stuff she thinks is bullshit.

I've got a few rockets I need to finish building for this year. And Floyd, the big pink monster that I just need to glue a fin back on to make flyable again. Gonna have to get on that.

And no rockets were lost. That's always a bonus. It took me a lot of lost rockets to learn to be conservative with the Newtons. If an A8 will get the job done, don't put a C6 in there, you'll take something the size of a novelty pencil, put it directly into the sun 1200 feet up and never see it again. If a D12 will do it, don't push an E30 in there, it'll drift into a neighboring county once the parachute opens. Don't go under, you want the parachute to open before landing, but take it easy. Even then, wind, trees, you're bound to lose a few.

Which I guess is the opportunity to build more rockets.

Return of the Son of Rocket Lobster Strikes Again

So I used to be Rocket Man. That was what some folks in Garnder addressed me as anyway, until about five years ago. It started out as a fun thing to do with my kids, turned into a semi-obsession, then I got kinda distracted.

Well, distracted around the time my kids started to try and get out of going flying. I enjoyed it myself, even did it without them some, but once they started resisting launches I started flying a lot less. Then I got more into cycling, met someone and remarried, and uh, stuff.

I'd been unwilling, though, to get rid of the stuff. My flying stock, my motors, my range box. I kept meaning to get back into it, it was so fun. I took a kid from the neighborhood flying I think around four years ago, and that went great but then I hadn't been back since. My nephew, though, turned five this spring and that's the perfect age to start. I mean, if you can't have fun at a model rocket launch, there's something dead inside you, but the great thing about five year olds is they are never dead inside.

My nephew couldn't come this week, and my neighbor's kid didn't answer the door (a freshman in high school now I think he was still asleep at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday, that's normal). But I dragged Mo out and we went to the KCAR club launch at Shawnee Mission Park.

Which was awesome. There was even a rocket made out of a pool noodle and the cap from a L'eggs pantyhose container.

For one thing, it let me sort out my range box and figure out what I hadn't found. Like my launch rod, or Mr. Creosote (I swear I still have a flyable version of that but I couldn't find him). Plus, I learned that the 12v battery for my launch controller is dead, glad I found that out before I dragged a five year old out to a park, got everything set up and then said, sorry, maybe some other time. But of course, the club's launch controller was working so I could still fly.

Plus, at the club launch there are so many rockets to see, so many people launching. I cam with four rockets to launch, but there were dozens on hand. There were also little kids, some of them brand new to this, and their excitement was infectious.

Three of the four rockets I brought had never flown before. The other one, Hatful of Hollow, my Smiths themed punk rocket, I have flown dozens of times. It's a smallish rocket, a size I normally loose quickly but this one has stayed with me a long time. One of the maiden voyages, my Mozzie (an upscaled Estes Mosquito than can handle a 29mm motor, suitable for a Level I high power certification I toyed with years ago) escaped on its first flight, tipping into the wind and going cruise-missile style into the beyond on an E motor. I searched in vain for it, it was a $40 kit, more like $50 if you factor in the rip-stop nylon parachute and reusable wadding. Shit. And I had neglected to even Sharpie my phone number on it so it's gone forever (only one person has ever called me after finding one of my rockets so that's a low percentage play anyway).

I did replace the 12v battery for my launch controller but I think I'll try to get my nephew out for the next club launch. It's so much more show than I can manage on my own.

And I do think Mo enjoyed the outing. She answered in the affirmative to questions about that before and after, and for the No Factory, that says something.

I can't believe I stayed away so long. It was great to see Bob, Blake, Dave, all these old friends and make some new ones.

Rocket Lobster Strikes Again

At one time, I was commonly greeted as 'Rocket Man' by people in Gardner.

But I haven't flown in years. I keep meaning to, but when my kids turned on it, I guess it lost some of its charm for me. That and cycling takes up a lot of the time I used to devote to building, painting, and flying these things. But my nephew who just turned five, he's the perfect age to take flying rockets.

I actually started these builds four or five years ago and am just not finishing them up. I have the makings for more in the basement but I thought I'd start with these that aren't a start from scratch situation. I think I still have two flyable models down there in addition to these two, so that'll give me a fleet of four plus my nephew's rocket. That's a good outing.

The biggest dilemma is motors. Clawed the Impaler, the lobster-claw-finned one, is heavy enough I might fly him on a composite E, and I think those age pretty well. But I have a lot of black powder motors that are easily five years old and I'm not sure I'm keen on risking my rockets to black powder that old. It's not a safety issue so much as I want the rockets back in flying shape and it seems like old motors are more likely to cato on ignition or have faulty recover charges (which results in a lawn dart).

Kick-Ass Weekend Part V: Austin's 5th

So after Critical Mass, the BikeSmut film festival, Dirty Kanza, Camping in Madison, cycling from Madison to Colony, we hit my nephew's birthday party.

This is still just a regular two day weekend, right?

Austin is a bright, earnest, rambunctious kid and I really enjoy him. He worries a lot about me eating spicy foods, a practice he finds bizarre and deeply disturbing. Turning five, I reasoned, he's the perfect age to take on a model rocket launch. I used to fly a lot, almost daily in summertime, before my kiddos got too cool for it. I enjoyed them enough to fly without kids some, but fell out of the habit. I have a couple of rockets in the basement that are pretty much ready to fly, another that could be with a fairly simple repair. I figured as a birthday present I'd get the lad a kit, one that's pretty near ready to fly, the starter setups Estes makes that come with a launch controller and launch rod. I figured I should run this by my brother first, since I'm volunteering him to build the thing—they're not difficult but they're not ready to launch out of the box, either, quite. He's game, so now I need to pick one out.

And then, meantime, I put in his card a promise to take him flying rockets. He's old enough to enjoy the countdown and chasing the recovered rocket down. I have a ton of motors, though the black powder ones that have sat in storage upwards of five years, I don't know if I want to use those. The biggest risks would be CATOs and lawn darts, both of which generally ruin a rocket. I have a couple of composite E's, too, and I only want to use those on relatively hefty craft because, hard experience, you put that many newtons under a light rocket and good luck finding the sucker.

But the one thing I'm sure of, there isn't a kid who's immune to the fun of a launch. Adults, for that matter, if they give it half a chance. A model rocket has no utilitarian function at all (possibly you could argue camera rockets make interesting pictures but Google Earth beats it and all you have to do is dial that up). A model rocket flight is pure fun. It goes up because it can, it comes down because it must, just like a manta ray jumping out of the ocean (Peter Benchley wrote a stirring piece about the rays in the Sea of Cortez, arguing that manta rays don't jump from biological necessity but for the hell of it).

I think I have some Hot Wheels track from my childhood in the basement from my childhood that needs to find its way to Austin, too. It's all interchangeable and my kids have outgrown it. If and when I have grandchildren, I might want some of that back.

Snow on the Rocket

As I was getting ready to ride in to the Bier Meisters competition Saturday morning, I was struck by the way Thor's Candycane looked with snow. Used to be one of my favorite models to fly, long since retired to a life as yard art.

Return of the Son of Rocket Man

I haven't flown model rockets in about three years. My kids seemed to burn out on it, and I got into cycling and other distractions.

But when I moved, I didn't even think about getting rid of my rocketry stuff. I kept meaning to take Corinna launching sometime, but that sometime never came.

I gave the kid next door a kit for his birthday, and he was too excited about that. Actually, he was excited to pull some of my wrecks out of the trash when I culled the rockets that weren't worth repairing.

So this evening, we were babysitting him anyway, and Corinna told him we'd go launch a rocket or two. It was exactly what I needed to get out my range box, sort through the fleet and figure out what was immediately flyable, and get it in the car.

We went out to Shawnee Mission Park, and it was really too windy to fly. We went down to the lake and up on the hiking trail while the sun was going down because the wind often goes with the sun. You don't want to launch in the dark (unless you have lights on the rocket), but right as the sun is sinking is often a sweet spot.

I honestly thought it was still too windy when we got up to the field, and I'd hate to lose Mr. Creosote, but since I haven't flown him since 2009, I didn't have the heart to let the kiddo down. After Mr. Creosote went off without a hitch, flying upwind and descending just across the road for a perfect recover, I realized two things: 1) I had forgotten the recovery wadding (though miraculously, his parachute and lines weren't singed); 2) I had to launch another rocket.

That meant Hatful of Hollow. I brought Iron Man along, though I don't feel his paint job is done. More than that, though, he's never flown, so I'm not sure how he behaves with particular motors, and I knew for sure that Hatful of Hollow would behave very well on a B motor in these breezes.