I am a Rocket Man

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Close up rocket shotToday I decided on a whim to take the boys to the hobby shop and get some rockets. Truthfully, I didnt spontaneously come up with the idea all on my own. I was actually browsing one of my frequently visited sites (Cameron Moll). I came across a link in the right hand column from his Wife about rockets and other things. I decided to read it. It really inspired me. I love spending time with my boys and I thought "Man, that would be perfect today".
After about 30 minutes at the Hobby Shop we settled on a pre-built model to decrease the Time Till Fun (TTF). We picked up some extra engines and another Mini Rocket the requires minor assembly. But, what hobby shop visit would be complete without a couple old school balsa wood airplanes?

Once we got back to the park and got the deal laid out and ready to launch, we discovered that we had a defective trigger for the ignition (no pictures). This really sucked because I had spent about half an hour getting this thing ready to launch, did the anticipated 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... ...Nothing. Boy did I feel like a schmuck. I was determined to launch a rocket today(MacGyver style or whatever). I promised these guys a rocket and darnit, we are gonna launch a rocket.

The boys waiting patiently Damn, off to the quickie mart to get another 9 Volt just in case. New nine volt = still no launch. "F$%@ it, I am going to disassemble this trigger and hard wire it to the battery". Sure enough! After a brief disassembly with a leatherman, the battery was giving the juice to the ignition. In just a few minutes we had lift off.

floating rocket But where there is smoke..., you know the rest. Actually the fire is just from the engine thrust which looks much cooler when you are actually there. Sorry you all couldn't be there. Maybe next time.

After launching the rocket three time with the engines provided, we broke out the extra engines we had purchased and hoped to continue the fun. Unfortunately, the ignitors didn't seem to work. Damn, oh well. At least we got to launch it three times and see a little fire in the sky.

Fire in the sky

 

posted by: ndicenso @ 8:08 PM   1 Comments | Post a Comment