Storage of Model Rockets

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GreatWhite

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Anyone have any tips? I am finding myself getting addicted to this real fast and I am not sure how I will ever store all of my "future" fleet. Anybody have any cool ideas?

-Patrick
 
Best thing I ever did was take a 2x4 and insert dowels on it sizes to fit into motor mounts (without deflecting the engine hook much). I then mounted that on the garage wall, tilted at a 45 degree angle. It made it really easy to put the rockets up out of the way, where they wouldn't get stepped on, knocked over, smashed, etc.

-Kevin
 
The neat thing about rockets is that they fit in well with any sort of decor in your house. Hence, they can be stored anywhere- in boxes, in offices, under your tables and bed, in the garage. Just ask my wife.:D
 
One of the better storage and transportation methods I've seen was at our local NAR section launch last year. This storage is for LPR and some MPR models.

Picture a plastic storage bin with the rockets stored vertically, noses down.

One member used one of the TALL (maybe two feet high), plastic storage bins. A piece of 2" foam was cut to fit the bottom, inside of the bin and set in the base.
Four or five inches below the top, he drilled 1/4" diameter holes spaced 2" apart around the perimeter. Elastic cord was laced through the holes from side to side making a evenly spaced grid.
The rockets are set into the bin, nose first into the foam at the bottom. The fins rest between and against the cord at the top.

This two foot tall bin would be for models around two feet tall. A smaller bin could be made for smaller models. The best scenario is for the rockets to be suspended and supported at the fins and nose cone.

I wish I had pictures and a name to give credit where it is due.
 
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Here's my "display" storage - one of my LPR rocket shelves.

It's a standard 8" x 4 foot wood shelf from Home Depot.
I drilled two rows of 1/8" holes, 3" apart. I drill about 2/3 the way though the base.
1/8" diameter x 8" long steel rods were cut and pressed into the holes.
I don't glue the rods in, this way I can remove them for models with wider fin spans. Launch lugs are simply slid over the rods.
On some taller models the engine mounts are set loosely over the rods. You could probably fit thirty rockets on that one shelf.

I learned my lesson the hard way years back. I lived in California and would feel (maybe) two earthquakes a year. Rockets didn't stay vertical on the shelf for long.
Back then I used 3/4" dowels or used engine casings (drilled and glued in the shelf) for support. But I found the steel rods easier. It's hard to remove a rocket with an engine hook off the dowel even if you've cut a recess for the bent end of the hook.

Rocket Shelf.jpg
 
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At home I have been hanging them with a piece of wire hooked into the drop ceiling and around the motor hook. I leaned my Mean Machine against the wall one time and it warped. It's also a good test to see if your nose cone is to loose. I have also scewed in some eye screws into a wood frame that encloses my electrical box and hang them from there. Maybe some pics tonight?
 
Hcmbanjo... I see in your photo both a rocket pizza and a hot dog....
Could you post a photo of the hot dog, I haven't seen that before....
-Kerry
 
Hi Kerry Quinn,
That was my entry in the EMRR Odd-Ball contest back in 2008.
https://www.rocketreviews.com/contests/photo_contest18.shtml

Scroll down to the entries. The only real pictures I have of it are there.

Some have suggested I should make a kit out of it, but I don't think the average builder would want to take the time. There was some nose cone splitting for the hot dog bun and a few unorthodox techniques. It required too much nose weight to fly stable anyway.
There were a lot of kids at our NAR section launch that day. Some of them asked where I bought the hot dog before they saw it fly.
 
Yeah, what Kevin said. In any event, just be sure you don't do this... :eek:

MarkII

Oooooh.....I see the old Astron Midget in two scales, and a really cool looking BT-60 2-stager with a clear payload section!!! Can we get some details on them? :cool: As for the original question, I have invested a lot of cash at WallyWorld buying clear plastic/vynil storage bins. They stack very nice. No way I can display the whole fleet. The big ones, 2.6" diameter and up are hanging horizontally from the rafters in the basement, everything else in the aforementioned boxes......except the current builds, which are displayed until they fly, then off they go. It is a sickness...:santa-smile:
 
Oooooh.....I see the old Astron Midget in two scales, and a really cool looking BT-60 2-stager with a clear payload section!!! Can we get some details on them? :cool: As for the original question, I have invested a lot of cash at WallyWorld buying clear plastic/vynil storage bins. They stack very nice. No way I can display the whole fleet. The big ones, 2.6" diameter and up are hanging horizontally from the rafters in the basement, everything else in the aforementioned boxes......except the current builds, which are displayed until they fly, then off they go. It is a sickness...:santa-smile:
Actually, there are three Midgets visible in both photos. If you look in between the the rocket on the stick (my Super Flea clone) on the right hand side and the Estes Wizard a little to the left of it, you will see, in order from right to left (smallest to largest), my cloned Midget Mini-Brute (the red one), my K-40 Astron Midget clone and my 168% Upscaled Midget. The Midget M-B has flown (once) and the Upscaled Midget has flown several times. I built the Upscale first because I wanted a Midget that I could fly on conventional 18mm motors. It has a Semroc ST-16 sustainer and an LT-115 booster and uses gap-staging. I flew the Mini-Brute once at an Old Motors launch on an A10-0 + 1/2A3-4 combination and nearly lost it. The K-40 clone with its Series III-style mounts has not flown yet. I had an Astron Midget as one of the rockets in my small fleet back in the late '60s. I flew it once and it was the only 2-stager that I ever flew back then. In fact, up until NARAM-51 this past August, Midget-style rockets were the only 2-stagers that I had ever flown.

The other rocket you asked about is my still-unpainted and un-decaled Apogoon, constructed from two Baby Berthas and a short section of fluorescent light tubing. The dark blue bands on it are sections of electrical tape on the shoulders of the nose block and nose cone to improve their fit with the payload section. It was one of my first builds after becoming a BAR, and I didn't know as much about rocket building as I do now. I didn't think to seal and fill the fins before assembly or to round their edges. I started to round one edge on one booster fin after I had finished the assembly and made a bit of a mess of it. The Apogoon has been sitting there on the desk for the past three years while I dither over whether to repair the fin edge and then leave all of them square, or to just start all over again and build another one.

The photos were taken in early January 2009, and there are several more rockets on the desk now. This is a bad arrangement because whenever one of them goes down, it takes several others along with it like bowling pins. So the photos don't depict my storage and display system; they depict my lack of a system! I have plans to build a multi-tiered rack out of 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I have all of the materials that I need but I have been procrastinating about going ahead with the build while I continue to tweak the design.

MarkII
 
As I mentioned before, I use cardboard boxes and bubble wrap to transport my rockets back and forth to launches. When they are home, though, I don't want them in boxes; I want them out on display where I can see them. Attached is a rack the I use to display some of my Micromaxx rockets. It is a (thread) spool rack that I bought at Joanne's Fabrics. It is 15" wide by 12" tall. I intend to build another, much larger version of it because I have many more Micromaxx rockets than I can fit on this rack. The PVC rack that I eventually build for my other rockets will resemble this design (I think).

[EDIT] Oh, yeah, I forgot. I also have a large clear box filled with paper rockets and another filled with saucers, too. I don't want to hang stuff from the ceiling, so I will use a combination of free-standing racks and racks that I can hang on the wall.

MarkII

DSCF0352.JPG
 
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No matter how you store them you'll never have enough room LOL!!!!

If you have the space to store them, then you don't have enough rockets!:hohoho:

I built some shelves and use dowels in lumber to provide the support. See my picture below. I arranged teh shelves at different hieghts to handle different sized rockets. The shelves are now full (and my wife won't let me build more). So, I have bubble wrapped some oldies that I know I won't fly any time soon and stored them in plastic bins.

10 year 023.jpg

10 year 019.jpg

10 year 020.jpg

10 year 021.jpg

10 year 022.jpg
 
Thanks for all of the replies! Looks like I have some building to do before I even have to worry about the storage issues that some of you have... haha! Happy New Year!

-Patrick
 
I had something witty to contribute but messed up the post...I can't figure out how to delete it...and now I forgot what I was going to say so...

Oh yeah, I showed my wife some of the photos of your storage and quantity of rockets in hope she will quit rolling her eyes when I order a new rocket. I have some catching up to do! My newest kit and I got the tubes to do a display of a Trident D320210224_163905.jpg
 
you're not supposed to "store" rockets.....you are supposed to launch them and have them float away never to be seen again.....until 10 miles away a little 6 yr kid finds it in his backyard, takes it in the house and says, "Mommy look what I found! A Rocket! "......and the circle of rocketry life begins again.
 
I have rockets in every room of the house except the bathroom and Kitchen...working on a polaris for the bathroom:) and completely fill a 10 x 10' x 12 shed.

No matter how you store them you'll never have enough room LOL!!!!

View attachment 14936

View attachment 14937
It seems to me there ought to be a Latin based medical term for this specific type of obsession? Should we start a naming contest?
 
Here's my "display" storage - one of my LPR rocket shelves.

It's a standard 8" x 4 foot wood shelf from Home Depot.
I drilled two rows of 1/8" holes, 3" apart. I drill about 2/3 the way though the base.
1/8" diameter x 8" long steel rods were cut and pressed into the holes.
I don't glue the rods in, this way I can remove them for models with wider fin spans. Launch lugs are simply slid over the rods.
On some taller models the engine mounts are set loosely over the rods. You could probably fit thirty rockets on that one shelf.

I learned my lesson the hard way years back. I lived in California and would feel (maybe) two earthquakes a year. Rockets didn't stay vertical on the shelf for long.
Back then I used 3/4" dowels or used engine casings (drilled and glued in the shelf) for support. But I found the steel rods easier. It's hard to remove a rocket with an engine hook off the dowel even if you've cut a recess for the bent end of the hook.
I wonder how many of those shelves you have now, since 2009 I think you've built about 1000 more rockets. ;)

What's the circled rocket?
1691777556092.png
 
And I thought that I had a sickness with a 6 ft long 2 ft wide one foot high box and a few other smaller boxes and a few in my rocket garden in a few more hanging from the basement ceiling.I got nothing on you psychos wow. I'm going to show these pictures of my wife and say see I need more.
 
I mounted pieces of plywood high on the walls (in the basement) and then drilled holes in the wood for rods. The rods are horizontal to the floor. At first I was cutting the rods to match the launch lug's height on the rocket. Now I leave the rods a bit longer so I can fit two or three rockets per rod.

1691796016288.png
 
I wonder how many of those shelves you have now, since 2009 I think you've built about 1000 more rockets. ;)

What's the circled rocket?
View attachment 597543
Maybe a few hundred finished models now.
In 2009, it was just a single shelf in my laundry room. Now a converted bedroom houses eight shelves and supplies for the Odd'l Rockets kit production.
That was circled model was an attempt to make a whistling (during boost) rocket. The lower fins were split and sanded trying to redirect the airstream. It didn't whistle.
 
I mounted pieces of plywood high on the walls (in the basement) and then drilled holes in the wood for rods. The rods are horizontal to the floor. At first I was cutting the rods to match the launch lug's height on the rocket. Now I leave the rods a bit longer so I can fit two or three rockets per rod.

View attachment 597605
That is... impressive. :oops: Pretty full (and up-to-date) Estes collection there.

Dare I even ask what it's like to try to extract one of the rockets from the mass up top?
 
One thing I worry about is the body tubes sagging over time if they are required to support the weight of the rocket without decent support along the length. Someone mentioned a Mean Machine warping when leaned against the wall. I can only imagine the sagging that might occur over a few years if a lot of rockets were held horizontally by the motor mount or launch lug.
 
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