Read the review HERE

Sweat-Stained Clifton Tracking Station Hat of Death

Around 1998, I was the project manager for a telemetry, command, and antenna control system. My team and I traveled to Clifton, Texas to run some preliminary tests with the antennas. Unfortunately they weren’t quite ready and since springtime in Texas is a tad warmer than in Maryland, we weren’t happy campers. With the prospects of spending a fair amount of time walking between the not-yet-air conditioned building and the antenna pads in the hot sun, one of my guys ran to Wal-Mart for hats. This hat became our team’s unofficial uniform, and mine came back fairly stained. I was finally about to chunk it when I got an idea...

I flew the hat on a G35 with the ejection charge removed. After the unsuccessful flight of another odd-roc, the RSO must have pretty much given up, and my flight card got stamped. The hat flew great, seeming to fly faster and higher than my similarly sized 29mm saucers. It fell slowly to the ground without even getting dirty(er).

This was my first wearable rocket - I wore the hat to the RSO table, to the pad, and back again after recovery. A construction article will be in the reviews section shortly. (here)

Don't Kick the Kitty is a scratch built rocket I designed that has been flown twice on an Aerotech G64W motors. One day I found one of my kids old tennis shoes and this Ty Beanie Baby stuffed cat sitting on the floor and thought "Hey wouldn't that make a cool rocket". I was going through a strange period in my life when everything I saw I wanted to turn it into a rocket. So my kids challenged me and said "Dad, no way can you make this shoe and cat into a rocket that will actually fly". My kids were wrong!

The booster section is 2.6 inch with a 29 mm motor mount. The stuffed toy cat became the nose cone and when the rocket comes to apogee in flight the toy cat is ejected (as if the cat is being kicked by the shoe). A chute is inside the cats body for recovery consistent with NAR safety rules. Now I didn't want people to think that I advocate animal abuse, especially since I am a cat fan- Hey I love cats! So I named the rocket "Don't Kick the Kitty" so people don't get the wrong impression. The rocket has achieved about 500 feet AGL flights on G64W with successful recovery. I am a NAR Level 3 Certified flyer and rocketry continues to inspires my creativity, whether a large or small project, and hopefully it will inspire you too!

The Worlds Finest Flying Outhouse

~9" Tall
16 Oz
29 MM Motor Mount
144" White "TP" Streamer
1/8" Aircraft Plywood bulkheads
Piston Ejection System
Lexan fins can be removed for display
Fly's well on E30 (with adapter) through G40's

This OddRoc came about during discussions in the line for the facilities, at XPRS 2002. This bird drew stares when we were first test flying it. Actually a prototype for a new kit we are preparing.

My Which Way's Up, a rocket that flies upside down. It features clear plastic fins in the nosecone for stability, and a genuine motor mount where one would expect it to be that houses a spent motor. The rocket feature rear.... err... nose eject, so the rocket recovers in a normal manner. It is based on an Estes BT-55 body tube, and the V2 nose and tailcone ordered from Balsa Machining Services.

This is my Ballistic Fence Post. It is about 1/2 scale to a "real" iron fence post. It made from a 30" BT5 body tube with a 'Hammered Mushroom" Fin design. (really just a draggy device to keep the back end in the back) It has 1/4 oz weight in the nosecone and is semi-stable in flight. It flies on 13 mm "T" engines.

It is stable through the high thrust portion of engine burn, and then tumbles slightly at engine burnout and "coast". Ejection has occurred at about 30 feet on each of its three flights. It is recovered with 2 streamers, made from the construction marking tape, like the stuff you see tied to fence posts. This model really needs more power. In hind sight, I should have designed it around a 18 mm engine, so I would have more choices for engines.

The Tooth

My daugher had her braces removed recently, so when we saw this contest announcement, she wanted to build a rocket shaped like a tooth.

The body is a foam rubber tooth my mother-in-law picked up from an insurance company trade show. Drag stabilization is provided by four Oral-B 40 toothbrushes. They are attached to the tooth with contact cement and (keeping with the dentistry theme) dental floss.

There is no parachute or streamer -- the foam rubber body is designed for "boink" recovery.

First flight was on an A10-3T engine. Flight was stable, but low and slow, reaching about 60 feet. Ejection occurred just before impact. The rocket landed nose-first, bouncing and tumbling a few times, but suffered no damage.

Given the weight (about 3 oz) and the high drag of this design, an 18-mm version would probably work much better. I have one more foam tooth; I just need to find four matched toothbrushes.

The ring fins are made from a mailing tube and the center body tube is a plastic bag tube from my local Safeway, the only rocket parts are the motor mount and the plywood for the centering rings.

Willie P started life as a Holiday Yard Light, but since he didn't sell well at Christmas he had to be rescued from a 99 Cent Bin at WalMart in an after Christmas sale. I also picked up a Santa light, but unfortunately Santa isn't very symmetrical or aerodynamic.

He seems very appropriate for some of our launches here in Colorado, where we launch all year round, as long as the wind's below 20 mph and the ceiling is high enough to see the flight. Landings in snow and mud don't bother the plastic shell and the rest is painted heavily for protection from wet landings.

Willie P can stagger into the air on a D12-3, and flies pretty well on D13-4 and D15-4 reloads, but his best flights are on E18-4 and F39-6 reloads. He's had 10 successful flights so far, with no damage other than burn holes in the parachute. He flies well in wind right up to 20 mph and the multiple ring fins aren't bothered by cross wind landings that would trash regular fins.

Batter Up!!!, or just bat that is. I call this the Whiffle Missile. Just one of those things I saw while walking through the toy store with my kids, and thought; "hey, why not?". It is a plastic baseball bat and ball turned into a rocket. It is fitted with a 24mm motor mount and balsa fins that are covered with team penant stickers. I hot glued the ball to the end of the bat for looks and improved aerodynamics. I cut about the top 3" of the bat off and attached a coupler to it so it functioned as a nose cone. I attached a basic shock cord and parachute recovery system. I couldn't get to a large enough area in time to get these pics, so I made an 18mm motor adapter and flew it on a C6-3 in my front yard. I was pleasantly surprised to see a perfect flight on this small motor. It flew fairly straight, but slow, to about 200 ft, arced over, ejected, and floated down beautifully. It was perfect for an at home flight and a lot of fun to watch. I can't wait to see it go on a D or E. I've never hit one out of the park, but I bet I can launch one out!

I have 2 pictures of a cool odd-roc owned and flown by Mark Dudek. It is a Sputnik like rocket. It is made from a globe and PVC pipe for the legs. It flew on a H242 and recovered safely. On recovery with the parachute, the PVC legs all absorbed shock on landing. It was a real cool flight.

Have you ever been walking through a store, seen something and said to yourself, "I bet I could make that fly." While walking through a drug store I saw some Crayon banks, but next to them were several large Baby Bottle Banks, about 5 1/2 inches in diameter and 30 inches tall. I picked one up and bounced some ideas around in my head and decided it wouldn't be too difficult to do. With several project looming around the house (rockets too) I put it back on the shelf. About that time I heard my wife say, "Oh, come on. You know you want to fly it!" So began the saga of my "Bottle Rocket".

The nipple was a perfect fit for LOC 2.6" tubing, so I got out the trusty dremel and made holes in the top and bottom of the bank to accept the tube. I didn't want to slot the sides of the bank and decided to pass a body tube through it and attach fins to the tube. The bank rests on the fins and is kept from sliding forward by a section of tubing glued around the outside of the airframe tube. I epoxied a 2.6' tube coupler to the flange at the base of the nipple, added nose weight and epoxied a bulkhead and screw eye for recovery system attachment.

After a long winter of cancelled launches, the Bottle Rocket finally got a chance to fly on March 1st. First it flew straight and true on a G80 FWL to around 800 feet. Then I took out the adapter and flew it on an H123. Boy did it scream. I flew it again at the GLRMR-3 regional launch on May 3rd, again on a G80. Unfortunately the ejection charge failed and it lawn darted. The original had plywood fins that detracted from the bottle too much, so this was a perfect excuse to rebuild it, this time with clear fins. The rebuilt Bottle Rocket made two flights at NYPOWER X on a G64 and another G80.

The Brick

A while back I was reading somewhere and somebody said you could get a brick to fly if you set it up right. It kinda stuck in my head. I have a two year old who is really into rockets (imagine that) one day he was playing with his cardboard bricks and making rockets out of them. So the thought hit me lets see if it will fly. I asked if I could have one to make a rocket out of it. He ran and gave me one right away. After trying several different ways I settled on this design. I think the hardest part was finding the CP since it's a rectangle, and using the cardboard cutout method, I had two CP's. I was thinking about averaging them but in the end decided to be safe and add weight until the CG was ahead of both.

The day we picked to launch was windy about 10 to 15 MPH. We decided to do it anyway. After launching several smaller rockets and losing one. I was really wary about launching THE BRICK. I loaded a D12-5 and put it on the launch pad waiting for the wind to die down a bit. With my eleven year old at the launch controls, my two year old standing behind me and two friends watching intently the wind still blowing I said start the countdown. Perfect flight, the wind didn't bother it at all. The only problem was a cracked fin on landing. Next time an E or an F???

It is a 5x upscale of the Astron Spaceman, We built a clone of the original and thought it just had to be bigger. Here it is flying on a H180 for my level 1 flight. Also setup to fly on clusters you could read more about it here

Found an Inflatable Easter Egg at a dollar store and decided to make it a rocket. The idea was for it to be inflatable (IE the egg to BE the rocket and not just a pretty skin). So the core tube was glued only to the bottom of the egg and the fins glued only to the egg. It has to be inflated to have an "structural integrity". Under-inflate and it goes limp. It flew "GREAT"!! I flew it at a PARA launch after many failed igniters and later with a 'chute at a Sojars launch where it went even higher (flies on D12-3's) Quite a nice flyer.

EggLofter

I saw these plastic eggs on sale at K-Mart, just begging to be blasted skyward. I didn't want to add external fins, but I was fairly certain that no amount of nose weight would make the egg stable. My solution was to add a draggy base disk, covered, naturally, in green paper Easter grass. Holes drilled through the base disk and egg accommodate the launch rod, eliminating the need for an external launch lug. Recovery is by rear ejection of motor mount and parachute.

Prior to launch, put a handful of wrapped chocolate Easter eggs in the grass on the base disk. They will disperse in flight - a wonderful labor-saving alternative to the tedium of hiding Easter candy one piece at a time!

Flight Report: An E18-4 lifted the EggLofter with authority. The draggy design allowed for a flight that was slow enough to enjoy. The egg flew through one vertical loop while under power. This flight behavior was a design feature, so as to maximize the dispersion of the chocolate eggs being carried aloft. (To those who doubt the veracity of this statement, I can only say "Hey, YOU try to calculate the CP of this thing!") Rocketeers desiring a more traditional up-and-down flight path may want to add additional nose weight and/or increase the diameter of the base disk when constructing the rocket. The ejection delay was too long, as expected, but the egg landed without damage during the coast phase. When the ejection charge fired, the parachute deployed perfectly, gently lowering the engine pod back to the ground. The crowd went wild; and the flight was considered a critical success.

See Descon 8 Entry

My "Big Red Crayon" had its first HyperTEK hybrid flight at ROCStock XVII last month. While I've become well-known for flying all sizes of crayons (particularly RalphCo crayon banks) on all sorts of motors, this was my first hybrid motor flight, and I'm quite proud of the fact that it went off without a hitch.

The Big Red Crayon is made from 8.5" diameter QuikTube concrete forms, fiberglassed for strength and durability. The nosecone is made from poster board, which I glued into the shape of a conical transition section, and then fiberglassed. The chute is a 15' military surplus cargo chute, which is a bit large for this rocket, but it does give a nice gentle touchdown.

The Crayon carried my G-Wiz LC Deluxe 800 aloft for deployment duties. As usual, it performed quite well.

The Big Red Crayon actually has a cluster of 4 motor mounts -- a central 54mm mount is surrounded by 3 38mm mounts. For this particular flight, I used a single HyperTEK J330 (54mm, 835cc tank, J-FX grain). The Big Red Crayon has flown in the past on a single K550, on a single K1100, and once, on a single K550 with three airstarted J350 motors.

For its next flight, I'm planning to use a HyperTEK J to get it in the air, and then airstart 3 solid motors (I'll have to see what motors are available -- the AeroTech fire really cut down on the variety) to give me more altitude and some tracking smoke. Maybe I'll do a Redline/White Lightning/Blue Thunder combination, since the next launch will be the week after the 4th of July....

My odd rocket is the Pringles Can rocket. I used two cans with the top and bottom cut off. It is a Five fin design. The nosecone is balsa and covered with pieces of other Pringles can outer wrap. The fins are also balsa covered with wraps from cans. It has a 24mm engine mount, and I thought it would fly fine on the D engine. It does fly on a D but not real well. The second flight was on a E28-4T for a straight and perfect flight.