How many flights do you get on your rockets?

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Forced_Induction

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Being relatively new to the hobby, I've always wondered, how many flights on average does everyone get on their rockets?

Ive scratch built most of my rockets and have anywhere from 20 flights (Estes black diamond) to 1 flight (more than 1 of my rockets unfortunately) each.

So what would you guys say is your average?
 
Depends... having over 75 in the fleet, some get flown more than others.. And, having 13mm to 38mm motor mounts, means some get flown more than others just due to cost & time & locations involved..

My Estes Leviathan is a favorite, and have probably just over a dozen flights on it. My Binder Stealth Jr. had over 30. My WM Darkstar has 2. My Madcow Seawolf had 2.. My scratch downscale BBZ has a over a dozen too.. my Der Red Max has 2.. A dozen or so flights per on average?!
 
Being relatively new to the hobby, I've always wondered, how many flights on average does everyone get on their rockets? [...]So what would you guys say is your average?

That depends entirely on how many rockets you have, and how many of them you choose to bring to most launch days.

The one I have flown the most is Estes V2, but that's mostly by happenstance, as it just happens to be the oldest surviving rocket that I still own.
Many other rockets that got built before (and after) V2 either got destroyed (in various creative ways), got lost, or got stuck in trees.
V2 is the survivor of numerous misadventures, it has been rebuilt a few times, but somehow, it is still with me after 20+ launches. I continue to bring it with me, and fly it, most launch days.

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Sadly, my ratio of success to failure is not good. On LPR models, they often end up in trees, land on a sidewalk and break, or occasionally drift away on a thermal. The more I spend on a rocket, the more care I take to get it back. But I had a Wildman 2.6 Darkstar that core sampled on its maiden flight; I lost my RW X-Celerator when I launched it to 9000' on a windy day; I have had to rebuild my MAC Scorpion twice, once after a core sample and once after a motor cato; my MAC Radial Flyer core sampled for reasons still unknown; my Estes Leviathan and MDRM both had several flights before errors with Chute Release and cable-cutters loosened the fins, and they are still grounded; my Madcow Formula 75 and Formula 200 are new enough to only have three flights each on them -- let's hope they are trend-breakers.
 
Madcow 4" AGM33 Pike and 4" Phoenix, cardboard and wood built per instructions with BS 5 minute epoxy, landing on hard pack desert (with the occasional rock and/or pavement) 11 flights each before they were so beat-up I decided to retire them.

PML 4" AMRAAM built by someone else, unreinforced phenolic tube launched 10 times before the brittle tube was cracked enough to retire.

On my fiberglass fleet, the most flights I have is the Madcow Reaper-3 with 8 flights and it still looks new.
 
I know it happens often where they get stuck in trees or they have a failure of one form or another, and it seems that my experiences so far are following the trend of others where I have 1 rocket that I've flown lots, and numerous others that have been, more interesting lol.

It's good to hear others chime in on this, keep them coming!
 
I've lost a few to the winds/trees, but haven't had a destruction yet. Still need to finish painting the chipped fin repair from my L1 Patriot.

Most is definitely my original Estes Patriot. Over dozen flights from B through D and still going (it's had the fins reglued a couple times lol)
 
My problem is, I keep building new rockets, so a lot of mine only have one or two flights. The one I've flown the most is probably Slipstream,
one of my first scratch builds. It has between one and two dozen flights. I remember the first time I flew it, the RSO said the fins would rip off. Well, they haven't yet. I've flown it on G's and H's.


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For small rockets at the park, I'll go out with my grandkids and fly the same rocket 7 or 8 times in a morning. Those rockets last longer then I can keep B and C motors in stock. They usually die because they got stepped on by a 7 yr old.

I don't think I've flown any of my 29mm to 54mm rockets more than 4 or 5 times, but all of them at least once. I always have something new and exciting I just finished and want to fly.

I hate to admit it, but once I've flown a rocket a couple of times, scuffed up the paint, and it starts to smell like used black powder.... well.... it's time to move on to a new one. :facepalm:

And I've been happily married for 30 years.... to the same woman. Go figure.
 
I still have a couple of NCR kits I built in the '80s that I fly 2-3 times a year . I also have a few surviving Estes & Centuri kits that date from the '70s. They fly only rarely.

I would consider myself a fairly conservative flyer. That's probably why I still have so many experienced rockets.

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For small rockets at the park, I'll go out with my grandkids and fly the same rocket 7 or 8 times in a morning. Those rockets last longer then I can keep B and C motors in stock. They usually die because they got stepped on by a 7 yr old.

I don't think I've flown any of my 29mm to 54mm rockets more than 4 or 5 times, but all of them at least once. I always have something new and exciting I just finished and want to fly.

I hate to admit it, but once I've flown a rocket a couple of times, scuffed up the paint, and it starts to smell like used black powder.... well.... it's time to move on to a new one. :facepalm:

And I've been happily married for 30 years.... to the same woman. Go figure.

She probably says to her friends that he is a little scuffed up and smells like black powder, but I think I'll keep him.
 
Here are my top 30 most flown rockets. Like Bob B I am fairly conservative flyer.

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Being relatively new to the hobby, I've always wondered, how many flights on average does everyone get on their rockets?

Ive scratch built most of my rockets and have anywhere from 20 flights (Estes black diamond) to 1 flight (more than 1 of my rockets unfortunately) each.

So what would you guys say is your average?

It would be hard for me to guess an average. The least flights is 0 (this year I cannibalized a rocket that I have never flown) and the most is 75ish. With somewhere around 250 flyable rockets it's hard to keep the average up.
 
Fiberglass Rockets with a good grade of epoxy should last a very long time. Should be flyable if the harnesses are replaceable and the anchors are good. Cardboard Rockets it depends upon how hard a life they have and if the harness anchors can be replaced if incompetent overtime. Kurt
 
Typically one. I'm in it for the building, and launching just proves that I did it right.

I did launch my Aerobee twice because I was trying to get the prototypical staging right.
 
Typically one. I'm in it for the building, and launching just proves that I did it right.

I did launch my Aerobee twice because I was trying to get the prototypical staging right.

So what do you do with them after you launch them? Do you store them until you have too many then culls me out? Sell some?
 
Depends on whether I get 'em back :-(. To date I've lost a Silver Comet, a 29 mm and a 38 mm minimum diameter scratchbuilds, a 4" scratchbuild, and not one but two 4" Patriots, both of which were on their maiden flight. Oh, and three altimeters, a skyangle chute, and two Tethers (release mechanism from Defy Gravity). Considering how infrequently I fly, that's a lot of loss. From now on it's low-and-slow whenever possible.

Best -- Terry
 
A guy at MDRA has a rocket named Tuber that has over 250 flights. I can't say all were HPR but all the ones I remember have been H motors.
 
I have learned my lesson on low and slow with lpr. I've lost a half dozen perfectflite altimeters now as well as 2 18mm RMS motor tubes. I scratch bud and make my own chutes so it's not much to build the rocket but with the altimeter and motor tubes it's a bit more expensive. My next round of builds will be bigger and heavier to keep the height down.
 
My Estes SPEV (built in 1976) had well over 250 flights on it when I lost it two or three years ago. It had had a couple of close calls before that, hanging for a week (through rainstorms) off a power line next to a middle school in 1990 (fortunately when it fell off, none of the kids molested it, and I was able to retrieve it), and at NARAM 42 in Geneseo (disappeared for awhile in the corn field) in 2000. It had had its motor mount replaced twice (cato the first time, and the second time after the aforementioned week on the power line), and had only one of its original fins.
 
Got 500 out of my Sprint. Vern Estes launched her on her 500th flight too :) then I gave it back to him explaining that I was disappointed in the product as I knew I'd never get 501 flights out of it... :)


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Got 500 out of my Sprint. Vern Estes launched her on her 500th flight too :) then I gave it back to him explaining that I was disappointed in the product as I knew I'd never get 501 flights out of it... :)

Very cool!
 
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