What are your least favorite (or most hated) rocket designs?

[SDramstad]

I never could stand the Estes Goonybirds. Not as a kid in the mid70s getting into rockets, not now as I look back

And I have been planning on building some upscale Goonys.

 

[Nytrunner]

Whats funny here is if you started a "Favorite Rocket" thread these same rockets would appear on that list.....

I'm pretty sure every category of rocket has shown up on both lists

 

[GlueckAuf]

I've never understood how the large and heavy types of spools, discs, trash can lids, you name it, especially those designed WITHOUT a parachute, somehow managed to get normalized in our sport and get a pass from RSOs. Too often I've seen these go from vertical to horizontal under boost, fall to earth under delay, and fire the (pointless) ejection charge in the weeds, risking an event-ending fire at worst or a delay to launching safer, more conventional rockets at best. They're supposed to spin or tumble to earth slowly, but many I've witnessed fail to do so and simply impact near the launchers or spectators with a disturbing thud.

 

[jrap330]

I have a hard time getting excited about any sort of oddroc. ...I legitimately don't know why. Example: at QCRC last weekend, someone flew a traffic barrel on an M2400. Flew straight as an arrow. I'm sure engineering that thing so it flew well was crazy hard, and as an engineer I appreciate everything that went into it. As a rocketeer, I'm doubly impressed that they made it fly well. But I don't get excited about it, and I honestly have no idea why. I wish I COULD get excited by those to be honest.

My favorites are large rockets that are low/slow type things, and anything long burn.

Here's the traffic barrel pulled from FB, my congrats to them who flew it. Crazy impressive.
View attachment 453544

I agreed 100 percent on oddrocs, great featvto launch but not interesting and that cone ugly.

 

[Exactimator]

For me it's become any basic 3FNC or 4FNC Estes rocket. It wasn't always that way.

It started with the Estes Gnome. Back before I joined a club, I had my own Gnome. It was small and sleek and shiny silver and could go reasonably high on a fractional A motor.

Then I started helping at our club launches. Boy Scout troops showed up en masse with Gnomes. We'd help launch several dozen a day. It doesn't take too long for the same rocket flying the same profile to get monotonous. Then "monotonous" feeling grew to include any basic rocket. Whoosh pop. Whoosh pop. Whoosh pop. Rinse. Repeat.

It got to be that ANYTHING different was a welcome sight. I grew to love the ACME Spitfire, Interceptors, Estes Shuttle, Apogee Mean Machine, clusters, The Dude, scale Apollo or Mercury, gliders... Even the Estes rockets with the helicopter recovery nosecones are different enough to get my attention.

I love Oddrocs. Pyramids, spools, saucers all are interesting to me because their motor roars and spits fire all close to the ground. And when the thrust stops they slam on the air brakes. Another club officer refers to these as a waste of a motor, but he's wrong and I let him know he is. We haven't argued hard enough to warrant flipping over the launch table. Yet.

 

[Orien]

For me it's become any basic 3FNC or 4FNC Estes rocket. It wasn't always that way.

It started with the Estes Gnome. Back before I joined a club, I had my own Gnome. It was small and sleek and shiny silver and could go reasonably high on a fractional A motor.

Then I started helping at our club launches. Boy Scout troops showed up en masse with Gnomes. We'd help launch several dozen a day. It doesn't take too long for the same rocket flying the same profile to get monotonous. Then "monotonous" feeling grew to include any basic rocket. Whoosh pop. Whoosh pop. Whoosh pop. Rinse. Repeat.

It got to be that ANYTHING different was a welcome sight. I grew to love the ACME Spitfire, Interceptors, Estes Shuttle, Apogee Mean Machine, clusters, The Dude, scale Apollo or Mercury, gliders... Even the Estes rockets with the helicopter recovery nosecones are different enough to get my attention.

I love Oddrocs. Pyramids, spools, saucers all are interesting to me because their motor roars and spits fire all close to the ground. And when the thrust stops they slam on the air brakes. Another club officer refers to these as a waste of a motor, but he's wrong and I let him know he is. We haven't argued hard enough to warrant flipping over the launch table. Yet.

And now we know how these strange, port-a-potty launching creatures are created. Fascinating.

 

[teepot]

I like and build oddrocs. But I wouldn't fly them in public until I have made sure they are safe. It also presents a challenge to me to make something fly that looks like it shouldn't.

 

[dr wogz]

the people who do "motor tests": sticking a C6-X in the ground & fire it.. just to watch it.. what, you want to shift the planet a few pico-microns?!

 

[user 13]

I just got this package from erockets today.

A fat boy, a short/stubby. an odd roc/ring fin, and a 3 forward canting fin pointy rocket!

I think I ticked everyones box!

 

[Orien]

I just got this package from erockets today.

A fat boy, a short/stubby. an odd roc/ring fin, and a 3 forward canting fin pointy rocket!

I think I ticked everyones box!

I will fight you right now!!

 

[user 13]

Will the winner get full rights to the mach 7 (seven) name? ;-)

 

[Orien]

Will the winner get full rights to the mach 7 (seven) name? ;-)

Oh, I didn't notice it was Imposter Mach Seven. Sure. Bout is scheduled for one fall. No holds barred (except face strikes, choke holds, half and full nelsons, and figure 4 leglocks). Loser becomes LilBabyMach and builds the other's favorite kit.

 

[Buckeye]

I'm sure I'm going to catch some hate for this too, but I've never understood the appeal of the Der Red Maxes. The shape/design is fine, but the decals. Didn't that side lose both wars?

In the same vein, I put the V2 in the list. Probably not a favorite among Londoners, either.

I won't say I hate them, but I don't see the appeal of pyramids, spools, Happy Meal boxes, etc. I guess I just like rockets that look like...rockets.

More generally, anything made out of household garbage is not a rocket.

 

[kuririn]

Oh, I didn't notice it was Imposter Mach Seven. Sure. Bout is scheduled for one fall. No holds barred (except face strikes, choke holds, half and full nelsons, and figure 4 leglocks). Loser becomes LilBabyMach and builds the other's favorite kit.

Don't forget eye gouges and head butts. "Professional" wrestlers used to always do that when I was a kid.

 

[boomtube-mk2]

In the same vein, I put the V2 in the list. Probably not a favorite among Londoners, either.

Or the citizens of Antwerp during that same time period.

 

[Orien]

Don't forget eye gouges and head butts. "Professional" wrestlers used to always do that when I was a kid.

I noticed you put "professional" in quotation marks. Are you implying there's something illegitimate about the sport?

 

[boatgeek]

In the same vein, I put the V2 in the list. Probably not a favorite among Londoners, either.

A student on our TARC team (who perfectly fits the "Awful things, why I'm going to hell, things I find funny Venn diagram on the LOL thread) had a small V2 that he flew at a large club launch under the name "To Winston from Werner." I died a little inside.

 

[user 13]

Oh, I didn't notice it was Imposter Mach Seven. Sure. Bout is scheduled for one fall. No holds barred (except face strikes, choke holds, half and full nelsons, and figure 4 leglocks). Loser becomes LilBabyMach and builds the other's favorite kit.

Hmm, Looking at the join dates I'm going to say I'm not the imposter Mach7.
Now I'm not saying it's you........


I think I'll go work on my Marslander/Fatboy kitbash made with an added forward angled ring fin.

 

[neil_w]

 

[asheriff]

For my money there's no ulglier rocket than the OOP Starlight Seiron3. Everything is just off to my eye, from the proportions to the transition to the blunt nosecone with the, um, unfortunate paint scheme.

 

[neil_w]

For my money there's no ulglier rocket than the OOP Starlight Seiron3. Everything is just off to my eye, from the proportions to the transition to the blunt nosecone with the, um, unfortunate paint scheme.

Hadn't ever seen that one before. Oh my. I would just say that whoever designed that one... well, had a very differently tuned aesthetic sense than my own.

 

[boatgeek]

For my money there's no ulglier rocket than the OOP Starlight Seiron3. Everything is just off to my eye, from the proportions to the transition to the blunt nosecone with the, um, unfortunate paint scheme.
View attachment 453952

With apologies to Douglas Adams, it is of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.

 

[prfesser]

I noticed you put "professional" in quotation marks. Are you implying there's something illegitimate about the sport?

"Professional" wrestling is like one of the best-known news outlets. It's entertainment, not real.

 

[neil_w]

"Professional" wrestling is like one of the best-known news outlets. It's entertainment, not real.

Quotes are in the wrong place IMHO. Should be Professional "Wrestling". I mean, they are definitely getting paid.

 

[Nytrunner]

Hadn't ever seen that one before. Oh my. I would just say that whoever designed that one... well, had a very differently tuned aesthetic sense than my own.

Thread case in point. The Seiron has cool exposed motor tubes, a torpedo-ish blunt nose, and the transition evokes staging ballistic missiles. I dont think it looks bad

 

[Jeff Lassahn]

That Seiron...
I agree with the sense that it's just "off" somehow. Lots of good design ideas, lots of style features that I usually find appealing, just everythings kind of the wrong size. Maybe someone who knows more about art design can explain why it doesn't work, because there's definitely something going on there...

Similar but less dramatic, Estes recently has a lot of nifty sci-fi rockets, but comparing them to the nifty sci-fi rockets from their 1980 catalog, the old ones seem way cooler. It it just nostalgia coloring my viewpoint or did those old designs really work better design-wise than the new ones?

 

[neil_w]

Similar but less dramatic, Estes recently has a lot of nifty sci-fi rockets, but comparing them to the nifty sci-fi rockets from their 1980 catalog, the old ones seem way cooler. It it just nostalgia coloring my viewpoint or did those old designs really work better design-wise than the new ones?

This is an interesting question.

I like the new ones a lot, and have mad respect for John Boren's designs. But they generally haven't burrowed into my consciousness like the old designs (especially from Wayne Kellner).

I attribute it not to nostalgia per se, but, in my case at least, my age when they were released. As a kid at roughly peak imagination, those old sci-fi rockets shaped my perception of what such a rocket should be. It's not clear if *anything* new to me at this age will resonate as well as those did.

Similarly, the music you love in your high school/college years tends to be the music you will always love the most.

Now, if you told me that even today's younger folks prefer the old sci-fi designs from the 60s/70s over the new ones, then that would throw this whole theory in the trash. Except about the music.

 

[RocketTree]

I always figured the Fat Boy was a mix of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs.

Has anyone replicated the Fat Man with fin box?

 

[jd2cylman]

I always figured the Fat Boy was a mix of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs.

Has anyone replicated the Fat Man with fin box?

View attachment 454034

My friend @PSLimo did one, do a search on here. I think he did a little bit on here about it.

 

[asheriff]

That Seiron...
I agree with the sense that it's just "off" somehow. Lots of good design ideas, lots of style features that I usually find appealing, just everythings kind of the wrong size. Maybe someone who knows more about art design can explain why it doesn't work, because there's definitely something going on there...

Right! I like a lot of the design elements. I like non-standard nose cones, transitions, and clustered exposed motor mounts. Somehow it just comes together all wrong.

I have mine sitting in front of me. I just can't put my finger on it. The picture doesn't fully capture it how "off" it looks.

That said, it's like flying it!