123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launch

This Thanksgiving the family headed out to shoot off a few rockets. Setting up in the field I was embarrassed to realize that I had left the launch control at home 200 miles away. Oh man!! Lucky my father came up with some old phone wire. Pull out a couple 123 spares for my LS and presto! Makeshift launch control by hanging the igniter tails off the wire and holding the batteries at the other end to put 6 volts through the wire. Family event saved. All launches went well. 1 rocket lost, but that's fairly common.

Thanks to CPF for connecting me with 123 batts!

Hey, Dave! Nice work! I hope you showed off the LS to your family, as well. After all, if it weren't for your flashaholism, the missions would have been scrubbed /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif. I think rocketry and flashlights kinda go together.

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

I remember when I was into model rocketry. First one I built had only 1 engine recommended. Sucker went into the clouds!! I knew it was lost when that happened.

Don't launch it, if you can't afford to lose it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

There's always rocket car races. We do this 2 or 3 times a year out on a dry lakebed.

Take a wheeled toy vehicle. Or make something. Attach one or more rocket motors. Optional fit with fireworks, explosive devices, bottles of gas, and/or douse with gasoline.

Take cover and ignite engine.

The winner may be for distance or most spectacular destruction. Sometimes they take to the air.

Great fun for the entire family.

Mutech

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

The only rocket I've launched was made of a paper towel tube, some household foil (for fins and a nose cone), some tape, and an Estes size "D" disposable rocket motor that I found somewhere. I'm guessing this was back in the early 1980s when I still lived in Alaska.

I forgot how the ignitor worked, but I'm guessing there was some kind of electrically fired squib built into the bottom of the rocket motor. Connecting it up to a battery would fire it.

It launched just fine, and probably went a few hundred feet up before burning out and landing in the woods somewhere. This was at night, so I can't be certain just how high it went.

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

Anybody ever do match head rockets? I learned this in cub scouts.

Take some books of paper matches and cut off the tips. Take a sharpened pencil and wrap foil around leaving the eraser end clear. Pull out the pencil and fill with the match heads leaving about 1/4" to a 1/2" clear at the end. Put a toothpick in the end and push the foil tight around it. Take the toothpick out. Place the completed "rocket" at an angle with the nozzel at the bottom. Light a votive candle and place under the rocket so that the flame heats up the rocket. After a few minutes the match heads will ignite and it will take off.

Mutech

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

man when i was a kid we had rockets they was so kewl u filled em up with water. then ya put em on this pump type thing then you would pump it up for a bit then ya will let the relase go and it went very high.i miss them things

Re: 123 Flashlight Saves Thanksgiving Rocket Launc

Those are compressed air rockets, raggie33. In my 8th grade science class, we made some using 2 liter bottles. We used a clamp with release device connected to a rope to hold the rocket down on the pad so we could pressurize it without it comming off. I happened to pressurize mine to 120psi before yelling at my friend to pull the launch cord. It went up so fast that the fins and nose cone broke off!
I forgot exactly how high mine went but I think it was about 30-40 feet.

I tried to make a rocket car by taping a C 6-5 engine to a hotwheels car (TOO SMALL!). I didn't have a launch controller so I just unrolled 20 feet of speaker wire and attached aligator clips to one end. When my friends were ready, we set up the car in the middle of the street and unrolled the wire to the sidewalk. I had a fully charged 12volt DeWalt drill battery and after a 4 second countdown, I touched the wire ends to the battery terminals which lit the rocket instantly (no delay like with 6 volts). Well, the rocket car shot foward then flew into the air and started spinning in midair for about 2 seconds then shot off into the sky the opposite direction from which it was pointing. I never found the rocket car.

I remember one good model rocket crash when I was a youngster. I bought one of those Estes swing-wing glider rocket kits. It was a bigger than most C-engine rockets and took about 2 weeks for me to build and paint all pretty with silver paint and red trim. This rocket was supposed to work by ejecting the engine frame when the recovery stage fired and the engine would parachute down while the wing of the glider would snap to flying position and start gliding to a landing. On the maiden flight I decided to use a C6-5 motor. Just too much coasting-time delay for this rocket. I fired it angled into the wind a little so I wouldn't have to chase it too far, but it just took a parabolic ballistic flight path, and I watched the recovery stage fire when the rocket was falling nose down about 10 feet above the ground. The engine parachuted to a safe recovery, but I think the recovery blast actually propelled the glider harder into the ground. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

We would make rockets by taking one or two (paper or wood) matches, wrap foil around the head (bit bigger than a postage stamp?), perhaps stick a straight pin up the side of the match (make a "true" exhaust port) and hold a candle or match under the match rocket on a "V" shape aluminum foil launcher. They would go a few feet. Great fun on a rainy day (we were very careful to find each rocket to prevent house fires).

Later, we did Estes rockets and used cannon fuse to launch. Seemed a whole lot simpler (never had a miss-fire or dead battery problem). Did learn the trick of tying a string to the CG of a rocket and swing it around to check for stability (straight flight) after we had one chase around the school yard.

Anyone do U-Control airplanes?

-Bill