ok, ok... i'll give...
Someone on RMR was asking about the Estes rocket cars and I just *had* to relate my experience with rocket cars...
years ago (early-mid 70's) I built a scale model of Gary Gablich's Blue Flame. One early sunday morning in New Smyrna Beach Fl, my neighbor and I went to the beach with a couple of tent stakes, 100' of cord and his mom's best sofa pillow (just in case)...
We hooked it all up and installed a D13 motor in it. It was BT70 based with ball bearing aircraft wheels. We had the stakes 100' apart with the twine tied between them. A pillow at the far stake and the blue flame at the beginning. We lit her off...
...with only 100' of line, the motor was still burning when she went *through* the pillow, shot into the air at an odd angle with a slow roll then hit the beach. After coming to a complete stop, the parachute popped out the back... much to the amusement of an older gentleman walking the beach that morning. He commented "that was the most exciting thing I've ever seen!"
Scared to death we'd get caught by someone we grabbed everything and shoved it in the back seat of the car and spead for home. We noticed a burning smell and I checked the pillow and it was smoking. With it sitting in my lap, the car started to fill up with smoke so we rolled the windows down. That helped, but not much so... ...I held the pillow out of the window...
Now, a 40MPH wind against a smoldering pillow will make for quite the large fireball... ...so I droped the exploding pillows (lordy, don't let the ATF know that pillows explode!) and it caught on the rear bumper... by the time we got home we had to explain how our rocket car didn't really work as planned, how we destroyed her best pillow and why there was a scortched mark on the back of dads car...
not a good day. but a *great* memory...
jim