funny rocket stories

bring it on

bguffer said:

I launched an Estes 36 D Squared that went unstable, and 'boomeranged' back to the launch rod:
[youtube]gzwacoEr7ns[/youtube]

Bob

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Three points for a ringer. That's the great thing about so many video cameras these days; eventually, everything that can happen will be filmed. Even a few things that can't happen. :eyepop:

jflis said:

This goes back a few years, but I was attending one of the larger launches based on a farm (may have been a Red Glare or LDRS, can't recall).
...

The "bad part" was when the farmer came running out of a small out-building screaming "What the heck are you DOING!? I just LIT that fire!" Turns out this was a controlled burn by the farmer and had NOTHING to do with the rocket.... LOL

Well, after everyone had settled down the farmer *was* quite impressed with how well we guarded his farm from fire!

good day!

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Hey, Jim! I think that was at LDRS (23?) at the airfield in western NY where we had to stop launching to watch the cool old fighter planes take off or land.

It was, Youtube LDRS 23 Music video and you will see them

Funniest story I have is when I was a young lad (WAY before computer simulations. PC's were a very expensive luxury, and all there was was Commodore PETS and Apple IIe's) I built a finless booster section (D12-0) for one of my scratch builts. It was a 20" long BT-50 rocket with 3 large fins (traced them from the triangle that came with protractor sets). Thought this would work well. I mean, the rocket had huge fins, right?

Uhh....no.

It went up about 30 feet, decided to scoot back and forth horizontally within a 30 foot circle, did this about 9 times. About 20 people were diving and running away as fast as they could, some were diving under trucks, cars, and whatever. I was just staring at the spectacle, kinda like this:

:y:

Everybody else was like this:

:eyepop::shock::eyepop::y:

Then the upper stage ignited, and it flew sorta up at roughly 30 degrees from horizontal, and it flew up and past the whole town! I was in the east side, rocket ended up on the west side. No houses were hit, nobody hurt. Rocket was recovered with minor damage.

Altho' a couple of RCMP officers paid us a visit later that night, because somebody called the emergency line saying that somebody was launching missiles at birds. After the interview, we all had a good laugh.

Back in the mid 80s we were having a club launch.

Now, somebody had a Maxi Alpha III converted to fly with the infamous F7 motor. If you recall, the MAIII fins were attached with little plastic tabs that would break off far too easily. The owner of the rocket set up his video camera on a tripod to record what he hoped would be a memorable flight.

Of course, the F7 didn't have enough "punch" to keep the rocket going upward. It "belly flopped" and broke off a fin. During the remaining 6 seconds of thrust, it scooted along the ground, back and forth across the area. Each time one of the remaining fins touched the ground, it would cause the rocket to turn to a new direction.

The video of the "launch", because it was taken from a single static position, was hysterical to watch. You would see the rocket slither off the view and a moment later a crowd of people running across the frame, followed by the Maxi Alpha Worm Burner. Then a moment later, the same thing in the other direction. It was kind of like "Rocketry Meets the Keystone Cops"

LW Bercini said:

Back in the mid 80s we were having a club launch.

Now, somebody had a Maxi Alpha III converted to fly with the infamous F7 motor. If you recall, the MAIII fins were attached with little plastic tabs that would break off far too easily. The owner of the rocket set up his video camera on a tripod to record what he hoped would be a memorable flight.

Of course, the F7 didn't have enough "punch" to keep the rocket going upward. It "belly flopped" and broke off a fin. During the remaining 6 seconds of thrust, it scooted along the ground, back and forth across the area. Each time one of the remaining fins touched the ground, it would cause the rocket to turn to a new direction.

The video of the "launch", because it was taken from a single static position, was hysterical to watch. You would see the rocket slither off the view and a moment later a crowd of people running across the frame, followed by the Maxi Alpha Worm Burner. Then a moment later, the same thing in the other direction. It was kind of like "Rocketry Meets the Keystone Cops"

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Sounds like the end of one of "The Benny Hill Show" episodes... the ones where everybody ended up chasing Benny around to that silly song, with the film speeded up appropriately... LOL

Funniest story I've seen was posted by someone else in one of these type threads a long time ago... although Jim Flis's story about the rocket going thru the old man's screen door and spilling his Cheerios is a close second!

Some kids were launching rockets in a vacant lot (IIRC) across the street from some rather nosy old woman (yall probably know the type-- always into everybody else's business and NEVER has anything good to say about anybody or anything...) The kids' rocket took off, went awry, and ended up smacking the nearby water tower in the adjacent lot. The kids panicked and ran. Soon the old lady called the cops to report that "some local kids blew up the water tower with a missile" and named names... apparently water was pouring out of the water tower into her backyard or something, and she wanted "those meddling kids" arrested... the cops show up at the kids' house, and they're in total panic mode, figuring they're going to be arrested for destroying the town's water tower... the cops talked to them (IIRC) but as it turns out, there was a faulty float valve in the water tower that had hung up, and the water tower was overfilling, and the excess water was spilling out an overflow drain at the top into the old woman's backyard-- which totally had NOTHING to do with the kids' rocket but sheer coincidence... but it put the "skeer" into 'em and taught the old lady a lesson in jumping to conclusions...

If anyone knows who originally posted this and they want to correct any of my misremembrances, please feel free and accept my apologies if I botched your story!

Later! OL JR

Sounds like the M project Dual Deployment fire...

luke strawwalker said:

Sounds like the end of one of "The Benny Hill Show" episodes... the ones where everybody ended up chasing Benny around to that silly song, with the film speeded up appropriately... LOL

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I was going to suggest that "Yakety Sax" would be the perfect music to add to that video!

That reminds me of a home video we have. It was taken with a Super 8mm movie camera by my father during a visit the the Space and Rocketry Center in Huntsville many years ago. He was filming the collection of rockets on static display. Watching the film, you see the bottom of a rocket then the camera slowly pans up to the top. Then the scene jumps to the ground then the bottom of the next rocket and the camera slowly pans up until you see the nose of the rocket. Then the scene jumps to the ground again and slowly pans up until you see ... the top of a light post.

-- Roger

Sgt Blowfly said:

Just heard this one from a flyer I met at Metra's monthly launch this past weekend....


He had his 29mm Stealth on the pad - someone thought it was a blast deflector and loaded his rocket
right on top of his Stealth.... you can guess the rest....

Evidently the damage was not too bad - he just put some tape on the "affected" areas and launched it for a perfect flight !

Bob
TRA6797

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Hey, that was my Stealth! And it was a 38mm (What can I say, bigger motors XD) Unfortunately my internet isn't letting me upload files, but I'll work on getting the pics up.

As you can see, the tape has been removed. However, this Stealth still flies and love H242T's! H123 Skids... not so much :sigh:

Last year this is what happened when I flew my 3" gnome rocket the Velocity Traveler:

This was a dual-deploy that had power failure after apogee charge fired.The launch was meant to document a complete launch with 3 on-board vid cams.

Cam 1 vid from the booster
Cam 2 on payload destroyed
Cam 3 inside payload attached to shockcord near chute facing down

Only one video was usable after rocket hit the van.One cam was completely destroyed attached near the gnome and micro sd card was lost,the one inside the payload had the sd card dislodged from hard hit and vid couldn't be retrieved.

I can laugh now...sorta but my roommate still brings it up and asks when will I fly another rocket into someones vehicle.:eyeroll:

[video=youtube;e1YEZAI8L_k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1YEZAI8L_k&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Hey Rocketguy,

Nice to meet you at the last Metra launch... Your stealth story was funny, so I thought I would share...lol...

Maybe we can finally drag race our crayons at next month's launch

Bob
TRA6797

Sgt Blowfly said:

Just heard this one from a flyer I met at Metra's monthly launch this past weekend....


He had his 29mm Stealth on the pad - someone thought it was a blast deflector and loaded his rocket
right on top of his Stealth.... you can guess the rest....

Evidently the damage was not too bad - he just put some tape on the "affected" areas and launched it for a perfect flight !

Bob
TRA6797

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That's funny. Who was the flyer?

Art Applewhite
www.artapplewhite.com

artapplewhite said:

That's funny. Who was the flyer?

Art Applewhite
www.artapplewhite.com

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Do'h! I guess I should have read the whole thread first.

Art Applewhite
www.artapplewhite.com

Sgt Blowfly said:

Hey Rocketguy,

Nice to meet you at the last Metra launch... Your stealth story was funny, so I thought I would share...lol...

Maybe we can finally drag race our crayons at next month's launch

Bob
TRA6797

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Hey, nice meeting you too! It was certainly a unique occurrence, at least at METRA. And feel free to share all you want! It's a rather funny story XD

Yes, we must drag race again! And hopefully I'll get a working pad this time

See you next launch!

Wes
NAR89431

Any more?

OK, one more.

Traveling home from college (pre-911). Went through the airport security. Had with me a backpack with some books and stuff in it. Backpack goes through the screener and is grabbed by security. They promptly swab it down and do a chem sniff. Backpack gets the OK and I continue. I chalk this up as a random screening. No big deal.

On the way back, same thing. backpack gets pulled aside, chem sniff, all is OK. It's weird, twice in a row.

This happens again on my next trip months later. On both legs of the round trip. It happens a third time. That's now six times in a row this backpack has been sniffed. ??????

Months latter I'm packing up to go to a launch. Reloads go into the backpack like every other launch. Oh S$^@!!!!! I now know why this backpack gets sniffed every time it goes through the airport. They detected traces of black power.

The backpack was promptly retired from air travel.

Mike, I'm afraid it may just be you.

I used my camera bag as a carry on for a half-dozen weekly trips to New Jersey a couple of years ago. Most of the weekends, I carried my camera in the same bag to rocket launches. I'm certain that used motors and unused igniters ended up in the bag many times. Even though the airport in New Jersey has those detectors that blow a puff of air on you and your carry-on bag, they never detected anything on my bag.

'Course the machine is labeled "Smiths Detection" and I never set it off myself, so I'm not sure they really do anything.

-- Roger (Smith)

jadebox said:

'Course the machine is labeled "Smiths Detection" and I never set it off myself, so I'm not sure they really do anything.

-- Roger (Smith)

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Ba-dum chink...Good one. That made me chukle.

Two rockets walk into a bar. . .

An Estes a Semroc and a Quest rocket are sitting on a launch pad. . .

What do you get when you cross a Loc Precision “Hi Tech” with a . . .

But seriously folks; the funniest thing that has occurred with one of my rockets was watching one drift slowly down, down, down from the clear blue sky only to drop directly into the operating gear works of the only “cricket pump” within sight.

Do any of you have any idea how much damage a model rocket causes to the gears of a cricket pump when it falls into them???!!!

Absolutely none.

What is a cricket pump?

jadebox said:

Mike, I'm afraid it may just be you.

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Ya, that's not the last time I've set off an alarm.

And that whole deal with the volunteer fire department, well, maybe another time.....

PUUHHLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAASE?

I think it's a really small hose with a sort of needle type attachment, much like you would use on a basket ball, with a hand pump that inflates crickets? :rofl:

During a demo for CAP cadets during their annual Summer Encampment near Alpena, MI--I launched a TLP Scud-B on a full power flight: Two D12-0s/ two D12-7s. The model climbed into the blue over the former base driving range until it was but a sliver. The Scud arched over the East/West runway and was pointing straight down when the ejection charge blew. However, the puff came from a location closer to the tail than the forward end. The model was clearly in a terminal dive and 300 cadets cheered as it stubbed out on the pavement.
Two cadets recovered the wreckage and returned it to me. The Scud resembled a cigar someone was smoking in an old movie when a door is opened into his face. The seam in the airframe segment above the fin can had burst open. "We'll make it fly again sir," one said to me. I removed the 24" custom nylon taffeta parachute from the forward compartment and let them keep the rest of the debris.

I really thought I had a good one when my buddy decided it would be hilarious to pack toilet paper in for wadding on my Estes Honest John, just happened to catch the Mayor's prize lawn on fire...

But mine PALES compared to some of these, this is one wild group...I love IT!! LOL

Friends seem to be SOOOOOOOOOO humourous these days....

I think I've told this one here before ... and even though it's more "cute" than "funny" ... I think I'll tell it again.

(I wish I had caught it on video ....)

Robb Haskin was acting as LCO at one of our low-power rocket launches. A little girl waited to push the button to launch her rocket. Rob began the countdown ....

"5 ... 4 .... 3 ..."

He stopped to say something about her rocket. Then he starting the countdown over. He did this a couple times, counting down "5 .. 4 .. 3" then interrupting himself.

For about the fifth time, Robb counted down "5 ... 4 .. 3 .. " then he started to interrupt the countdown once again when ... whooosh! ... the little girl had had enough of his fooling around.

-- Roger

blackbrandt said:

What is a cricket pump?

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Cricket pumps also know as a walking beam pumps is the common pump seen all over oil country.

They come in sizes small enough to fit in a bath tub to some that are two stories tall.
Even the largest of them are powered by relatively small electric motors relying on a big gear reduction to transform the high RPM of the motor shaft to a far lower RPM but with much higher torque.

Large counterbalanced weights help get the rotating parts through the top and bottom dead centers of the up and down parts.