How Did You Get Into Rocketry?

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No glad you posted this. There are plenty of BS threads currently running in tandem on this site right now so it is refreshing to see a neat rocketry related thread. I also have never seen the older thread and IMO I think repeating threads have value! Thank you for starting.
 
My dad got me started in the hobby when I was 5. We built our first rocket together and launched it in our backyard. I was instantly hooked. I looked forward to going to the Ben Franklin shop and seeing the Estes display. I collected the catalogs and was inspired to build and fly rockets. I left the hobby in high school and then discovered high power rocketry after my mom turned me on to the movie October Sky!
 
Padseven said:
My dad got me started in the hobby when I was 5. We built our first rocket together and launched it in our backyard. I was instantly hooked. I looked forward to going to the Ben Franklin shop and seeing the Estes display. I collected the catalogs and was inspired to build and fly rockets. I left the hobby in high school and then discovered high power rocketry after my mom turned me on to the movie October Sky!
Click to expand...
Wow awesome! Well I think it's quite amazing how much inspiration a movie can give. I guess it's almost been a lifelong hobby for you sir despite the short pause in high school
 
I'm a Boomer ( I'm old enough to remember Sputnik ) and when in high school some friends & I started building & flying Estes rockets. When I went to college my rocketry quit until about 20 years ago. Some of my friends from high school saw some Estes kits in a store and it said on the kit "for ages 12 & older" so they decided they still qualified. :p

So we started launching again. Every year we get together at a friend's cabin here in NW Wisconsin in mid-February and launch from a frozen lake. Been doing this now for 20 years or so.

A few years ago the Tribal College I worked at (I retired this past summer) was invited to the First Nations Launch Competition and so I was asked to be a mentor. This is a HPR competion and there were maybe 28 Tribal colleges participating. In the process I built my own HPR and got my Tripoli Level 1 cert. HPR is kind of spendy so I don't do as much of it as I'd like to. But I have started MPR. Any rocket launch is fun.

Here's some info on the FNL. https://spacegrant.carthage.edu/first-nations-launch/

Here's the first launch team.

We participated last year & are participating this year too.
 
Greg Furtman said:
I'm a Boomer ( I'm old enough to remember Sputnik ) and when in high school some friends & I started building & flying Estes rockets. When I went to college my rocketry quit until about 20 years ago. Some of my friends from high school saw some Estes kits in a store and it said on the kit "for ages 12 & older" so they decided they still qualified. :p

So we started launching again. Every year we get together at a friend's cabin here in NW Wisconsin in mid-February and launch from a frozen lake. Been doing this now for 20 years or so.

A few years ago the Tribal College I worked at (I retired this past summer) was invited to the First Nations Launch Competition and so I was asked to be a mentor. This is a HPR competion and there were maybe 28 Tribal colleges participating. In the process I built my own HPR and got my Tripoli Level 1 cert. HPR is kind of spendy so I don't do as much of it as I'd like to. But I have started MPR. Any rocket launch is fun.

Here's some info on the FNL. https://spacegrant.carthage.edu/first-nations-launch/

Here's the first launch team.

We participated last year & are participating this year too.
Click to expand...


Ohhhh a frozen lake launch sounds cool! Also that video of the first team is awesome! Wow if that was mounted on a fighter jet I would never be able to tell the difference!
 
I was always a space nerd, got my first decent telescope when I was 9.

Got into rockets when I was maybe 11. My dad would take my friend and I down to the school yard to launch.
My launch kit need 12 volts from a car battery.

Just go back into it 5 years ago when seeing some folks during the daytime at a starparty launching :)
 
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PXR5 said:
I was always a space need, got my first decent telescope when I was 9.

Got into rockets when I was maybe 11. My dad would take my friend and I down to the school yard to launch.
My launch kit need 12 volts from a car battery.

Just go back into it 5 years ago when seeing some folks during the daytime at a starparty launching :)
Click to expand...

Astronomy and rockets, nice combo! It's cool you got a good mix of both. Both very cool and interesting hobbies Sir
 
My 14 yr old son.
I flew a few Estes rockets when I was young but I just saw it as a toy and didn't find it exciting enough to continue.
More important things on my mind, like the 3 P's.
Up until very recently, as far as I knew, little model rockets made out of cardboard tubes was the end-all/be-all of this kids hobby.
It never would have crossed my mind again. Too silly for a grown man to care about.

My son, who is heavily involved in STEM (he's much smarter than I ever was at his age) has been enamored all of 2019 with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
He has his mind set on joining the Air Force and becoming an aerospace engineer. Much of what he talks about goes over my head but I always show interest.
He asked about model rockets so I brought him to Hobby Lobby to pick out a few kits and pick up a launch pad. He was kinda impressed. Not much though.
Then he found some YouTube vids of LDRS! I felt bad telling him that was out of reach for the average person. He kept at me though.
He showed me the Apogee Components website. I dove in and realized, holly **** this is real!!! I had no idea this was going on.
So now we're off to the races. We're both getting L1 certified together next month and all we talk about are rockets. We study and build our rockets together.
I've told him about you Yukon and have shown him your website.
He thinks that somebody in his age range doing what you're doing is about the coolest thing.
Now I have to learn what all the hype is with 3D printing because of you!
 
My father was a model airplane guy. We attended a airplane contest at North Park Mall. The owner of the local hobby shop (ABC Hobby, Ken Ballard), launched a model rocket as a demo. I bought that kit. That was 1957-1958.
 
I saw the recent Lego Saturn V and said "Darn! For THAT price, I can get like 6 REAL rockets!"

So in theory, it's to save money.
 
Cmac said:
My 14 yr old son.
I flew a few Estes rockets when I was young but I just saw it as a toy and didn't find it exciting enough to continue.
More important things on my mind, like the 3 P's.
Up until very recently, as far as I knew, little model rockets made out of cardboard tubes was the end-all/be-all of this kids hobby.
It never would have crossed my mind again. Too silly for a grown man to care about.

My son, who is heavily involved in STEM (he's much smarter than I ever was at his age) has been enamored all of 2019 with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
He has his mind set on joining the Air Force and becoming an aerospace engineer. Much of what he talks about goes over my head but I always show interest.
He asked about model rockets so I brought him to Hobby Lobby to pick out a few kits and pick up a launch pad. He was kinda impressed. Not much though.
Then he found some YouTube vids of LDRS! I felt bad telling him that was out of reach for the average person. He kept at me though.
He showed me the Apogee Components website. I dove in and realized, holly **** this is real!!! I had no idea this was going on.
So now we're off to the races. We're both getting L1 certified together next month and all we talk about are rockets. We study and build our rockets together.
I've told him about you Yukon and have shown him your website.
He thinks that somebody in his age range doing what you're doing is about the coolest thing.
Now I have to learn what all the hype is with 3D printing because of you!
Click to expand...

Wow that is amazing sir! I'm so glad to see other guys around my age interested in the same thing! I hope you and your son get your Level 1 cert! Also, I find it funny that your story of your son is very similar to mine! Maybe you and your son should get into 3d printing and CAD design! It opened another world for me, and the capabilities it gives you is amazing!
 
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Yukon@K-9 Rocket Tech said:
Ohhhh a frozen lake launch sounds cool! Also that video of the first team is awesome! Wow if that was mounted on a fighter jet I would never be able to tell the difference!
Click to expand...
Yukon, that was a 1/2 scale AMMRAM 120. So it's half as big as the real thing.

Also, I've had Huskies & Malamutes for many years so I like your avatar. :)
 
PXR5 said:
I was always a space need, got my first decent telescope when I was 9.

Got into rockets when I was maybe 11. My dad would take my friend and I down to the school yard to launch.
My launch kit need 12 volts from a car battery.

Just go back into it 5 years ago when seeing some folks during the daytime at a starparty launching :)
Click to expand...
PXR5, I'm an amateur astronomer too. I also make telescope mirrors as a hobby.
 
Greg Furtman said:
Yukon, that was a 1/2 scale AMMRAM 120. So it's half as big as the real thing.

Also, I've had Huskies & Malamutes for many years so I like your avatar. :)
Click to expand...
It's quite amazing how tiny missiles look until you go up close to one. Also thank you! I also like your license plate! Will be pretty awesome to drive around town with that as your license plate and a few rockets strapped on the roof rack
 
Poking around Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurst, IL, September 1995, dad and I saw a LOC Precision Bruiser hanging from the ceiling. My dad and I asked the resident rocket guy at the time (Dustin S. IIRC) about where those are flown. First Bong launch we attended was October of 1995, and the rest is history. :)

I miss rocket trips with dad something fierce.

Resized_20200315_173858_6162.jpeg
 
rfjustin said:
Poking around Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurst, IL, September 1995, dad and I saw a LOC Precision Bruiser hanging from the ceiling. My dad and I asked the resident rocket guy at the time (Dustin S. IIRC) about where those are flown. First Bong launch we attended was October of 1995, and the rest is history. :)

I miss rocket trips with dad something fierce.

View attachment 409269
Click to expand...
I love the story! Also, you look really similar since you were younger! The smile is identical too! It will be so cool to make a book about everyone's stories on here and that picture would be perfect
 
I started as a very small child in the pre-Internet suburbs some years back. My brother told me that I once forgot to put wadding in one of my rockets and the parachute deployed in flames and burned up in a second or two. I also remember my brother's scissor wing being launched. Instead of retracting, the wing flew straight off the airfoil and the remaining parts lawn-darted only about 100 feet from us. I can still hear the intense "woosh!" as it entered the ground. A replay of "The Sword and the Stone" followed as my father and brother tried to extract the thing from the ground. I don't remember at all why we stopped launching, but we did and rockets never came up again.

Then I took a few decades off. I moved to the city, forgot completely about rocketry and have lived mostly in condos ever since, which aren't exactly conducive to rocketry. The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 revived my interest in spaceflight and I read a few books and went to the local hobby shop out of curiosity. I wanted to try rockets again, but I had no idea where to launch them. Then I discovered the local rocket clubs and realized that I could build rockets at home and launch them at big sod farms or parks outside of the city. And NAR membership even included insurance. I built about 5 LPR rockets in rapid succession and began launching them with a local club just last summer.

I made a deal with myself: I would only pursue HPR if I could build and launch these LPRs first. Having done so, I'm now looking into building an HPR and seeing what happens. Being a computer programmer and having fiddled a lot with microcontrollers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, I'd like to eventually mix those two interests and see what happens. I guess we will see.
 
I was afraid of model railroads. LOL!

Actually, I found some issues of out of print high power rocketry magazines at the local hobby shop and that’s how I became a Born Again Rocketeer.

Read a few articles, discovered Larry Brand’s work on tube fin rockets, started building his designs, and certed Level 1 on a scratch built tube fin. Ari Krupnik certed Level 3 on a scratch built tube fin, as well, so there’s that.

To this date, folks still associate me with tubers even though this season has been the first time I flew tube fins in at least five years.

Larry Brand may be the Tube Father and Ari the Tube Daddy but I’m still the Toob Dood.
 
ewomack said:
I started as a very small child in the pre-Internet suburbs some years back. My brother told me that I once forgot to put wadding in one of my rockets and the parachute deployed in flames and burned up in a second or two. I also remember my brother's scissor wing being launched. Instead of retracting, the wing flew straight off the airfoil and the remaining parts lawn-darted only about 100 feet from us. I can still hear the intense "woosh!" as it entered the ground. A replay of "The Sword and the Stone" followed as my father and brother tried to extract the thing from the ground. I don't remember at all why we stopped launching, but we did and rockets never came up again.

Then I took a few decades off. I moved to the city, forgot completely about rocketry and have lived mostly in condos ever since, which aren't exactly conducive to rocketry. The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 revived my interest in spaceflight and I read a few books and went to the local hobby shop out of curiosity. I wanted to try rockets again, but I had no idea where to launch them. Then I discovered the local rocket clubs and realized that I could build rockets at home and launch them at big sod farms or parks outside of the city. And NAR membership even included insurance. I built about 5 LPR rockets in rapid succession and began launching them with a local club just last summer.

I made a deal with myself: I would only pursue HPR if I could build and launch these LPRs first. Having done so, I'm now looking into building an HPR and seeing what happens. Being a computer programmer and having fiddled a lot with microcontrollers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, I'd like to eventually mix those two interests and see what happens. I guess we will see.
Click to expand...
Very interesting! Seems like the Apollo 50th anniversary surely inspired a lot of people! Also Arduino and raspberry pi on rockets sound very interesting! I Love flight computers!
 
I got a rocket kit for my 8th or 9th birthday and was my first real introduction to science. I got into pyrotechnics too, but made my way back to rocketry as the proper safety measures and laws are much easier to comply with after having our son. In the end, I just like rockets and things that fly in most forms.
 
My brother was doing Centuri on steroids in 1965. Then he went to college and didn't touch them until 35 years later.
I started around age 8 or 9. At 10 I made my own launchpad and launch system with a light switch and a doorbell button.
We became BARs around '98, we saw a damn 8' rocket on the cover of a magazine. We did some high power stuff together. He got his L2. I went on to building something ever since when worked allowed and reached L3, thanks a lot folks! LOL. Now I have a disease for which there is no cure..rocketry.
See the BumperWAC we did together.Centuri_Rocket-1.jpegFB_IMG_14.JPGbumper%20culpeper%2005.jpeg
 
I've been hooked on space ever since reading children's books on the planets when I was maybe four or five. Being interested in space flight and rockets was just one of several offshoots from that. When I was a kid and living in the St. Louis area, a local community college had these little summer activities that parents could sign their kids up for. In 1996 I did an astronomy one, and in June 1997, there was one for model rocketry for kids ten years or older. Since I was turning ten in July, my mom was able to squeeze me into it. We all built Estes Alphas and flew them on A's and B's. For my birthday the next month, I asked for more rockets. I've been flying rockets ever since.

When I was in high school in Wisconsin later, a rocket club was getting started for the Rockets4Schools event in Sheboygan, and through that, I learned about high power. Rockets4Schools has both a class 1 rocket that flies on an I211W and a class 2 rocket that flies on a K550 available for the teams. My team did the class 1 my freshman year and class 2 for the other three years, and managed to place every year. I joined Tripoli as soon as I turned 18 and made it out to Midwest Power 3 in 2005 with a group of students from Purdue with a PML X-Calibur I built in my dorm room. I launched that on an H148R with a motor case borrowed from Vic Barlow. The following summer of 2006, I built a PML Eclipse to try out dual-deploy and get my level 2. I flew the Eclipse at Bong on a large I motor, and then flew it again at Midwest Power 4 on a J motor for my level 2 certification.

I don't have a level 3 yet mostly because I haven't really been in a place to cover the expenses involved with building a level-3 sized rocket and buying a large motor case with an M reload until recently. However, I also want to have a successful flight on a K motor before trying. I've tried to fly a K motor once, and it ended up shredding the rocket. My second attempt is pending my building a new rocket with a 54 mm motor mount, which is one of my goals for this year. I plan to reuse the fins and nose from the shredded rocket and name the rebuild "Phoenix."

I have the distinction of NOT being a BAR. While I have at times had to go on hiatus from rocketry due to life circumstances, it was always with the intention of getting back into it as soon as I could.
 
We were bored in the summer of 1977 and got word that one of our neighbors was going to launch a rocket. I think we assumed bottle rocket, but when we got to his backyard, it turned out to be an Estes Scout. I don't remember what motor he used, but I suspect a C6-5 based on the distance it traveled. After an impressive flight, it wound up landing more than five houses away at the opposite end of the street. Everyone wanted an encore flight, but the asphalt landing had broken off a fin and it would fly no more that day.
That night at dinner, every kid in the neighborhood must have hit Mom and Dad up to take them to the toy store in the shopping center. (Those being the JC Penney Toyland and the fabulous Newport Shopping Center.) As I recall, they had an excellent selection of Estes rockets. My brother and I both picked the Beta. Others picked the Javelin/Super Flea combo, the Rogue, and several Mosquitos. After a fevered building session, we packed our bikes and rode out to Northern Kentucky University, (strangely bypassing B6-4 Field where I've done much of my flying over the years.) We set up in an empty parking lot over the soccer field and launched until we were out of motors. Several of the kids, my brother included, launched once and decided it wasn't for them. By the end of the day our group was down to 3 or 4 guys. I picked up an Estes Condor after that, another guy bought a USS Atlantis that he painted dark red, and the guy who started it all upped the ante with a Centuri ESS Raven. $9.00 for a rocket! He treed it after a bout of launch fever. The USS Atlantis was destroyed in a "canyon jump". (We lived by a large hill cut for I-471 and he tried to fly it side to side.) 43 years later and I'm all that's left.
 
NateB said:
I got a rocket kit for my 8th or 9th birthday and was my first real introduction to science. I got into pyrotechnics too, but made my way back to rocketry as the proper safety measures and laws are much easier to comply with after having our son. In the end, I just like rockets and things that fly in most forms.
Click to expand...
It's fast, it has fire, it flies... Rockets!
 

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