When I was growing up there was (and still is!) a wonderful little hobby shop in my home town of Edmonds owned by two brothers. The brothers started a model rocketry club and held workshops at the elementary school. All my friends and I joined the club and the brothers taught us how to build rockets. I built an Estes X-Ray and a 3 engine cluster Cobra.
They set up the launch pad on the ball field and loaded and primed the engines, but we got to push the button.
Fast forward several decades:
My girlfriend’s son is 31 going on 10, which works good because I’m 56 going on 14. After sharing the above story with him, I wasted no time in ordering a kit from Amazon. Two rockets and a launch system for $35. The 30″ tall “Amazon” is all plastic and went together quickly. I let the kid put it together and I built the “Crossfire” which is a traditional build.
The morning of the first launch, I set the rockets up on the floor to take a picture and stepped on the Crossfire. It just broke a fin so I cut the damage out and used a piece of scrap balsa to make the repair. The Crossfire mission was scrubbed but Amazon was still a go.
We drove to the athletic fields and were pleased to find it relatively deserted. We set up the launch system, primed and installed a B6-4 engine and slid the rocket down the launch rod to the blast shield. I hooked up the leads to the ignitor and showed the kid how to use the controller and handed it to him with a big grin on my face.
5-4-3-2-1… Lift off! It’s still a rush. I remembered the sound, the smoke, and the smell like it was yesterday. It zoomed to 150′ and after the 4 second delay, the ejection charge fired and the chute deployed flawlessly. We were both grinning and laughing – just like little kids.
Yesterday we went back to the fields to fly the Crossfire. We brought more family members this time including the 8 year old grandson. We set up the Amazon for him and let him launch it. We had to angle it into the wind a little so it only flew to about 100′. It still got the expected reaction from the “crowd”.
I placed the Crossfire on the pad. It’s smaller and lighter than the Amazon and they suggest an “A” engine for first flight but I had bought two packages of B’s to be used in either rocket. Well, it went up about 600′ and out of sight until the chute opened. “It’s gone” I said, and started running, trying to keep an eye on it. I managed to catch it 200′ from the road.
I’m pretty sure rocketry is going to be an all-family hobby. After our outing my girlfriend made us drive her to the hobby store to pick out “her” rocket. And I bought more engines…