One launch and gone...

Until today the last time I launched a model rocket was in the 1960's when I was a kid. I decided to buy a simple kit and get back into it since I'm going through a "second childhood" anyway. Well, I bought a little rocket and spent several hours lovingly cutting the fins, gluing, coating, sanding, painting etc until it was a really great looking little rocket. Went out and launched it today, 4th of July, and....gone. Puff of smoke and just disappeared into the sky. Now I'm really having second thoughts about this whole model rocketry deal. Seems like you invest time, money and loving effort into building a rocket and it's just gone in a flash. I honestly can't see myself wasting anymore time and money into such a pointless endeavor. Any advice?

Hi Ken,

I am very much a beginner, but I have lost several rockets learning what the different motors will do -- including having the rocket launch out of sight, never to be seen again (at least by me). It is normal to get a little bit discouraged....after all there is the joke that our hobby is throwing money on the ground and lighting it on fire.

I encourage you to stick with it for a bit. I know that I am now much better at judging a rocket's ultimate altitude based on its weight and motor. I also have developed, more or less, a routine for my rockets. Like yourself, I initially went full out on the rocket finish. I've really scaled back....especially after losing a few. I make the finish good enough, but I most certainly am no longer chasing perfection.

I'm actually sanding some fins right now. I probably could go a lot better on them....but I could lose this rocket. At the very least, the fins will probably get dinged on landing.

Keeping these things in mind has really helped me keep perspective and has increased my enjoyment of the hobby.

(My most expensive lost rocket cost me $500. It was a little 12" or so rocket.....C6-5 I think. It went up and away, but I was pretty sure I could tell what direction it landed -- I saw the steamer glint in the sun for a bit. So I hopped in my SUV and drove in that direction. And got stuck. In mud. Cost $500 for a tow and subsequent repairs.)

Use smaller motors so rockets don't fly so high.

Use colors for your rocket and parachute/streamer that are different than the sky and ground. Pink is a great color as it rarely occurs naturally. Use Mylar for streamers as it is highly reflective.

Don't launch on windy days.

Don't launch late in the day, so if a rocket is lost you have time to search for it before it gets dark.

Join a local club if there is one. More eyes means a greater chance of spotting it in the air or on the ground. Also, more rockets being flown means you get good idea of where the wind is carrying rockets and where a missing rocket likely landed.

If there is no club, launch starting with low flights and work your way higher. Again, you can track where rockets will likely go if you lose sight of it.

Don’t give up after just one failure. If you do, you will always wonder what it’s like to succeed. Build another, and another, and another...

Seek out your local rocketry group for guidance and launch with them. I’m perhaps wrongly assuming that you launched it by yourself and not with a group.

Bummer losing your first rocket coming back into the Hobby.

Sometimes it seems like the probability of a bad flight is directly proportional to the time spent finishing the rocket!
When I read reports like yours, it reminds of of this post.

4 pages long, over 100 posts, beautifully documented 13 foot long unique nose cone-less cluster high power build. Even used gold leaf in finishing. Had a perfect upward first and only flight (proved the design worked!) with disaster recovery. Pretty much trashed. Builder had a great attitude even after the event.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/open-body-missile-build-for-my-level-2.24733/

I don’t know the details of your rocket’s “vanishing act”. Rocket size, recovery type, motor size, field size, number of eyes watching the rocket, and WINDS are all potential factors. Since you already have the pad and ignition system, consider trying another rocket, something that is either an easy build or RTF, on a low wind day with lowest power recommended engines. Get some experience launching again, and hopefully you will have better fortune the next time you launch a prize rocket that you put hours into building. (And if you REALLY prize it, RETIRE it after one flight to “prove” it!)

Best wishes

Ken Lind said:

Until today the last time I launched a model rocket was in the 1960's when I was a kid. I decided to buy a simple kit and get back into it since I'm going through a "second childhood" anyway. Well, I bought a little rocket and spent several hours lovingly cutting the fins, gluing, coating, sanding, painting etc until it was a really great looking little rocket. Went out and launched it today, 4th of July, and....gone. Puff of smoke and just disappeared into the sky. Now I'm really having second thoughts about this whole model rocketry deal. Seems like you invest time, money and loving effort into building a rocket and it's just gone in a flash. I honestly can't see myself wasting anymore time and money into such a pointless endeavor. Any advice?

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Start with a smaller motor. Fly them low until you get a feel for how far they drift in different wind conditions and choose your motors based on the size of the field you're at and the weather conditions. Losing a rocket sucks - staying conservative with motor selection will significantly reduce the pain. BTW my very first rocket ever was lost on its first flight........and so was my second. Just gotta get back on that horse.

Now if we're talking about the Estes Mosquito, it's common to lose those on even the smallest motors. Modifications to that rocket can help with that (using a Kevlar shock cord, instead of glueing the nosecone on). Other than that, don't use the largest motor that is recommended. Estes first launch recommendations are done to prevent just what happened to you.

Ken Lind said:

... I honestly can't see myself wasting anymore time and money into such a pointless endeavor. Any advice?

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Yes, I do have advice. Take pictures of your rocket and record the launch on video. A video can last forever, takes up less space, can be slowed down, and can be shown to anyone at any time. I lost a rocket last year and while it did serve its purpose building up my skill and testing new launch equipment, I regret not taking a video.

Also, if if you care about simulations, you can use software like OpenRocket to build your rocket and see how high it will go with a given motor. You might even want to reduce the altitude by adding weight in the nose cone.

But mostly, take a video. If you can follow the entire flight, fine, but if not, set up a tripod by the launch pad, and just film the launch. That alone is a worthwhile endeavour.

K'Tesh said:

Now if we're talking about the Estes Mosquito, it's common to lose those on even the smallest motors.

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This happened to my 12 yo son about a month ago. His Mosquito was his first Level 1 build that he did with zero help from me. We went to launch it at a club launch and the RSO had a heart to heart with my son. He basically told him that he could put a motor in and launch it, but there is a 99% chance we would never see it again.

I was proud of my son. He said "thats ok, let's launch it!" And we never saw it again... No shelf queens in this family!!!

Those of us who come here regularly clearly don't regard our hobby as a pointless endeavor. And I'll venture to say that we've all experienced lose or destruction at some point. Kinda goes with the territory when you're dealing with flying models. I've lost rockets when I wasn't "flying the field"; when I was ignoring conditions on flight day that would suggest a lower impulse motor, modifying the recovery device, relocating my launcher relative to field boundaries, not bringing along my spotters, etc. I think you should reconsider your position.

Sounds like you put lots of time into building and finishing, but no time into flight planning. Flight planning is critical. When placing the rocket on the pad, you should know how high it's going to go, what the windspeed is, what the expected amount of drift will be.

TRF is a great place to learn those things. I hope you will stay with it and stick around.

A few tips:


1) Join (or at least fly with) a local club. Such organizations normally have good fields, and you will have many sets of eyes on your rocket when you fly it.

2) Try to fly in very calm weather. A small breeze can carry your rocket a long way.

3) Don’t fly rockets in the middle of the day in the height of summer. You are simply launching them into the sun when you do that. Not only will you lose the rocket, you won’t see it fly. Launch in the morning or evenings. View with the sun at your back.

4) Observe the rocket from a distance. The guy launching the rocket doesn’t have the best view. That person’s perspective is end-on. For a low power rocket, I recommend half the anticipated altitude as a good observing distance. If you don't have that much room... you don't have enough room.

5) Be aware of trees on your field. To the novice, for example, a golf course seems like a wide-open space. A rocket person looks at a golf course and says, “Look at all the trees!” View fields in that light.

6) Use streamer recovery or reef your chutes. Reefing is just taping the shroud lines just below the canopy, to prevent the chute from blossoming all the way. The rocket falls faster, but nearer.

Luck and Regards

Sorry to hear about your loss...good advice has been given on how to try to avoid this in the future, but sadly rocket loss is an inevitable part of the hobby (unless you only use the smallest possible motor with your models). I remember flying once in a field that had a single set of power lines running across it...(a fairly large field at that). Guess where it landed?

Another time I'd built an Aerotech Wart Hog (a fairly pricey rocket) and had a brand new reloadable motor casing...took a chance (as the conditions had been good that day) and flew it with a G104 load. Never saw the guy again...it drifted out over a large lake outside the launch field. It was carrying an electronic beacon too :-( .

The loss hurts, but the majority of lost rockets can be replaced and if a rocket is very special (e.g., I still have a few models that I built as a kid 40 years ago), then only launch it rarely and only with low power motors under ideal conditions. I usually save the higher power motors for kits that were easy to build and that I won't mind losing.

Ken Lind said:

Seems like you invest time, money and loving effort into building a rocket and it's just gone in a flash. I honestly can't see myself wasting anymore time and money into such a pointless endeavor. Any advice?

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That's part of the fun... the unknown outcome. It's all about the journey, not the destination.

Many thanks to all of you who responded to my post. I got up at 6 this morning and wandered around the launch area looking...to no avail. You've encouraged me to give it another shot (no pun intended). The Hobby Lobby near me has those 3-packs of Estes Bandits on sale for $13.99 so I'll go grab one of those and just slap them together and give it a try. They also have 1/2A3-2T engines on sale for $2.75 a pack. Are those ok for the Bandits?

I did reach out to the local rocketry club here in Albuquerque and got zero response to two emails. That kind of annoyed me since they're supposed to be trying to promote model rocketry and they didn't have the time to respond to a newbie asking for help. So, the heck with them, I'll go it on my own.

Thanks again for the encouragement.

Recommended Engines
1/2A3-4T (First Flight), A3-4T, A10-3T

More here: https://estesrockets.com/product/002435-3-bandits/

One thing I've found adds a lot of fun to the build process is to Download the free Open Rocket and build the rocket in the simulator at the same time you build the rocket. https://openrocket.info/

Then you can try the 1/2A3-2T engine in the simulator to see how it works.

The other thing you can do is start a build thread here and ask questions. You've got a world of internet rocket folks here ready and willing to help. All ya gotta do is ask.

Happy Trails....

Personally, I enjoy building at least as much as I enjoy launching. So whatever I lose, is an opportunity to build another one. However, like you, I do put time and effort into each rocket, so losing one is always a disappointment. I tend to launch to conservative altitudes, and with practice, I've learned which motors to use on my rockets at each field to have a good chance of recovering them. I'm not trying to set any altitude records, and the spectacle of the launch is the fun part anyway.

With a 1/2A3-2T motor, the parachute will eject before the rocket reaches its maximum altitude ("apogee"). This will:

• act as an air brake for the rocket and prevent it from reaching its maximum altitude,

• possibly (somewhere between 1% and 99% chance) cause come sort of damage to the rocket. If damage happens, my guess is that a string attachment point on the parachute will rip, and the rocket will fall faster than it should, possibly causing more damage.

That's why Estes recommends "1/2A3-4T". The "4" is the delay in seconds between thrust cut-off and parachute ejection (coasting time). https://estesrockets.com/product/002435-3-bandits/

Well, you have your answer about the motors that are on sale... No, they'd not be a good match for those rockets... That said, that's a really good price for those motors, and if you ever plan on some small field launches, it'd be a cheap investment for some future rockets. Another thing that can be done with them is to use them as smoke generators for something like the Saturn V. If you build motor mounts inside the outer engine bells, then invert the small motors (so they burn from the usual top down to the usual bottom), you can ignite them as a cluster, and their smoke will add to the look of the flight without causing detrimental thrust vectoring should one fail to ignite.

K'Tesh said:

Well, you have your answer about the motors that are on sale... No, they'd not be a good match for those rockets...

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Or they might be a perfect choice for the Bandit if you add weight to it... or change the fins, add a cockpit or ????. Again, more fun you can have with Open Rocket... make some changes and run the simulations.. you'll learn a lot by doing this.

K'Tesh said:

Now if we're talking about the Estes Mosquito, it's common to lose those on even the smallest motors. Modifications to that rocket can help with that (using a Kevlar shock cord, instead of glueing the nosecone on). Other than that, don't use the largest motor that is recommended. Estes first launch recommendations are done to prevent just what happened to you.

Click to expand...

Same thing happened to my sons Mosquito rocket.

Take someone along with binoculars, paint it fluorescent orange or black that will be contrasting to the blue sky, use the 1/2A motors. Don't give up on the club yet, it's a holiday week. You can meet lots of good people at launches.

Ken Lind said:

Until today the last time I launched a model rocket was in the 1960's when I was a kid. I decided to buy a simple kit and get back into it since I'm going through a "second childhood" anyway. Well, I bought a little rocket and spent several hours lovingly cutting the fins, gluing, coating, sanding, painting etc until it was a really great looking little rocket. Went out and launched it today, 4th of July, and....gone. Puff of smoke and just disappeared into the sky. Now I'm really having second thoughts about this whole model rocketry deal. Seems like you invest time, money and loving effort into building a rocket and it's just gone in a flash. I honestly can't see myself wasting anymore time and money into such a pointless endeavor. Any advice?

Click to expand...

Hi Ken,
An expression in rocketry is “The up part’s easy.”
I have lost rockets also and it always haunts me. As others have said there are techniques that make it less likely that you will lose a rocket.
I would recommend attending a local club launch and just watch to see what kind of flight you are able to easily track. Some of us have neck problems, vertigo, or eye problems that might make it easier to watch large slow rockets.
For me, switching to fluorescent paint helped a lot. I used to fly white or light colored rockets but I found that where I launch those colors blend in to the landscape much too easily.
The best thing is to go with someone to a large open field and flying a flight that you will have no trouble tracking and which results in the best possible flight experience. That’s why I think launching with a club is best.

The Estes mosquito must one of the most lost rockets. Back in the 60s I built one put it on my home made pad. Launched it and over the house it went into the woods to never to be seen again.

My sympathies to the OP. I am curious to know what the rocket and motor were. It sound like a too-large motor was used for first flight, but there are a lot of other variables in play as well.

Here are a few True Facts about this hobby, some of which overlap what others have said.
1) Losing rockets sucks.
2) Losing your first rocket on your first flight sucks extra hard.
3) If you fly rockets, at some point you will lose one, for any of a variety of reasons. Doesn't matter how experienced you are, or how carefully you plan. Couple of years ago I watched an experienced rocketeer launch a gorgeously built high powered rocket perfectly straight upward through the wispy clouds, never to be seen again. No one saw it come down (it's amazing how that can happen), and the tracker failed. I still shudder at that one.
3b) A corollary to the above is that you should never fly what you're not willing to lose. This is actually a standard rocketry maxim. Presumably applies to flying RC planes as well, although they're probably not as often completely lost as destroyed.
4) That said, with careful planning you can minimize the chance of losing your rockets.
5) A philosophy that I and many others go by is: "It isn't a rocket until it flies". I will fly everything I build at least once, no matter how many hours spent on construction and finishing. That doesn't mean I won't be puckering like crazy, and I absolutely do not want to lose any of them (some more than others, certainly). I will do everything in my power to plan the flight so I'll get it back, but I know there are no guarantees. That, I suppose, is part of the "excitement" of launching.

In addition to proper flight planning (knowing how high your rocket will go with the motor your using, having a good idea of the wind, knowing your recovery area), there are a few other things you can do:
1) Build up a small fleet of rockets to bring when you fly. This will reduce the sting of losing one.
2) Always have a couple of rockets that you don't care much about (ready-to-fly rockets work great for this), and fly at least one of them first on a small motor. This way you can gauge the winds and make better motor choices on your subsequent flights. If the results of the flight are not good (e.g., long drift), you might choose to fly nothing but those "disposable" rockets on that day.
3) *Most* rockets can be flown on a small enough motor that it'll come down fairly close and can be recovered. Exceptions are tiny light rockets like the Mosquito, tend to disappear once they get up there, and which can be hard to find even if they land right next to you.
4) Advice given above about having other folks with you to help track the rockets is very helpful. This is one of many advantages of flying with a club: lots more eyes to help track the rockets coming down.

None of this takes away the sting when you inevitably lose one. However, unless you're really foolish, over time your percentage of lost rockets will be small. An in any case, if you enjoy the building of the rocket, then it's hardly pointless.

Always try to have someone watching from several hundred feet away from the launch pad. The rocket will be much easier to follow since the angular velocity across their field of view is much lower. Good binoculars help too when watching from a distance.

I launched a mini engine rocket and it got stuck in a tree in my backyard, which backs up to the field on the other side of the fence. It stayed up there for about a year until a wind storm blew it down. It was an all-plastic RTF model, so it was still in good shape with a new parachute. I found a HiJinks in my yard that must have blown over the fence, but the body tube was a little water damaged, might be able to repair it. One time I found a nose cone that appeared to come from an Amazon in the field, and it was a perfect fit for a cardboard tube from wrapping paper that I had saved, and I built another rocket from that. You lose some, you find some. I enjoyed the time building them and painting them. Take a good picture of it before you launch it, the picture may last longer.

My most prized rocket from when I was a kid was the Centuri Magnum D sized Jayhawk, I made this at the peak of my building craft abilities and had a rocket that looked like the one on the face card. I launched it several times at the soccer field complex in my hometown. Every year there was one less field and one more building. The year I lost it, it landed on top of a bank where there used to be a field. I did not have my name or contact info on it, and never got it back. (sorry to repeat an old joke here again) I actually keep most of my childhood rocket collection on display hung in the trees around the perimeter of the school soccer fields in my hometown.

GlenP said:

Take a good picture of it before you launch it, the picture may last longer.

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I forgot to add that one to my list.

GlenP said:

I actually keep most of my childhood rocket collection on display hung in the trees around the perimeter of the school soccer fields in my hometown.

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I like that one!

Yep those little 13mm rockets POOF gone!

I recovered a mosquito once purely by accident. I had launched a 18mm Big Bertha and went to retrieve it. Along the way back just happened to see the mosquito laying there!

I would recommend going with bigger rockets. A big bertha is a great beginners rocket. Stable and easy to follow. With B6-3 it does not go very far, defiantly not the POOF instant out of sight thing.

Just a reminder folks... The OP didn't say what his kit was. I was the one who started this Mosquito business... Of course I have a way of dealing with those pesky mosquitos.