What is the worst part about the hobby?

[Cl(VII)]

Worse than sanding, painting and paint runs combined is "Orange Peel" when clear coating because it ruins all of the others. Instantly sends you all the way back to the start of finishing, but this time with extra crap to remove before you can even start over.

 

[Cl(VII)]

A few years ago I decided to build some stuff out of carbon fiber, I found it was much like fiberglass.
The protip I found as a fiberglass tech was that coating your hands/arms with elmers glue, letting it dry, and peeling it off will pull all the fibers out of your skin.

In thank to the boss that gave me this tip in the 70's. I've used it a lot since.

Doesn't that peel the hair out of your arms too? I guess if you did it often enough it would only be a real problem the first time.

 

[Rob Campbell]

When RC airplane events coincide with regional launches and you're addicted to both hobbies.

 

[Grog6]

no, not really, I'm not sure why, but it pulls a couple, but nothing like waxing, lol.

 

[ksaves2]

The worst thing? Filling balsa fins with sanding sealer, laminating plywood fins or any fins with 1/3, 2/3rds and full span fiberglass and epoxy. Painting for a nice finish sucks royally as once the fins and tube are sealed (cardboard mainly as glass is not so bad) Prime and sand, oooops I cut through the primer! Then prime and sand once again.
Then shoot the color coat and if one wants to get a "really gloss"
finish, gotta wet sand the color coat and if one "cuts" through it, gotta "shoot it" again. Shoot! Oh and one has to really make sure the "coats" have dried and cured, otherwise they'll bubble up and totally mess up all the work they've done when shooting the clear coat!!
Putting the clear coat on, o.k. to add layers of clear after 15 or 20 minutes initially but when done, let it sit for a week or two. If you don't, the paint and clear will bubble and destroy the scheme if you shoot more clear coat over it too soon. Been there, done that. Then it's time to wet sand with ultrafine sandpaper, and then use rubbing compound, then polishing compound and then a good car wax! Try not to soak the inside of the cardboard tubes if you're using them. (Fiberglass tubes are easier.)
Go through this hell and you'll have an immaculate gloss finish that reflects your image in sunlight.
More than likely the rocket gods will look at your rocket and accept it as a sacrifice and you'll never see it again or your project will "auger in" and be destroyed or drift off to be lost.
O.k. I have a few rockets that I treated this way and are "still alive" but the paint is somewhat scuffed up from flying.
That's a thing to keep in mind as rockets might get dragged across a cornfield by winds and "ding up" your immaculate paint job. Kurt

 

[MALBAR 70]

Finding places to store built (and unbuilt) rockets.

 

[Rob Campbell]

Constantly changing Krylon and Rustoleum formulations.

 

[Grog6]

I store rockets in long Rubbermaid containers, and I glue in foam pieces across the short way and cut slots in it so the rockets' snap in' to the slots.
I can get a few rockets in each one.

 

[smstachwick]

A few years ago I decided to build some stuff out of carbon fiber, I found it was much like fiberglass.
The protip I found as a fiberglass tech was that coating your hands/arms with elmers glue, letting it dry, and peeling it off will pull all the fibers out of your skin.

In thank to the boss that gave me this tip in the 70's. I've used it a lot since.

That sounds nasty!

 

[DAllen]

The absolute worst thing about the hobby is club drama. I'll put up with disappearing gliders, lawn-darting rockets, cato's, sanding, peeling paint...I’ll put up with all of that to my dying day so long as I never have to deal with grown a$$ed adults acting like idiots.

 

[smstachwick]

The absolute worst thing about the hobby is club drama. I'll put up with disappearing gliders, lawn-darting rockets, cato's, sanding, peeling paint...I’ll put up with all of that to my dying day so long as I never have to deal with grown a$$ed adults acting like idiots.

I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid that but I can see how it evolves.

 

[Bill S]

Doesn't that peel the hair out of your arms too? I guess if you did it often enough it would only be a real problem the first time.

Ow ow ow ow ooooooh....

 

[Grog6]

Let me repeat:it's not like waxing, I think the natural oil on them lets them slide by, the FG or CF lacks that. I've bone this pretty much every time I've handled them in the last 40 years. (damn I'm getting old)
Regular white elmers. This is all that made that job bearable.

 

[bronicabill]

For me it's the lack of flying sites, and being seriously limited by weather!

In my area, we fly off of a farmer's property during the growing off-season. Since it is still a working farm, we are only allowed to fly once a month. Being during the late fall through early spring months, the weather prevents flying approximately half of our launch dates!

While there is another field closer to home that we do impromptu launches from, it is small, surrounded by businesses, and therefore limited to LPR or MPR up to F-impulse only. Just wish we had a permanent flying site for year-round that didn't require a 2-hour drive (there is a park in middle TN available 7-days a week year-round, but it's a 2-hour drive from my area).

Having only been able to launch once per flying season (due to family conflicts or illness on launch day), I am seriously considering selling all of my rockets after this season is over and going back to R/C airplanes that I can fly whenever I want to!

 

[jqavins]

The protip I found as a fiberglass tech was that coating your hands/arms with elmers glue, letting it dry, and peeling it off will pull all the fibers out of your skin.

I use that sometimes just to get my hands clean. Wash with soap and warm water, they look clean, then do this and the glue comes off slightly grey.

I am seriously considering selling all of my rockets after this season is over and going back to R/C airplanes that I can fly whenever I want to!]

Calm down now, let's not do anything drastic. You could just move, so let's not get crazy.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Oh I don't know, probably MUD! For some reason, my rockets home in on the stuff.....

??MUD?? We fly next to cattle/buffalo. That ain't *mud* your rocket just got dragged through!

From the email of prof of a college team today "...fiberglassed the fins after a previous bad experience and even though both the forward and aft tubes had a few pounds of dirt and manure as they were dragged so far, there was no damage to the fins—hardly a scratch. "

 

[Peartree]

The long gaps between launches that I can reasonably travel/afford to attend.

 

[DEmery]

Fire season.
Sanding.

 

[Ez2cDave]

CATO's . . .

 

[John Kemker]

A few years ago I decided to build some stuff out of carbon fiber, I found it was much like fiberglass.
The protip I found as a fiberglass tech was that coating your hands/arms with elmers glue, letting it dry, and peeling it off will pull all the fibers out of your skin.

In thank to the boss that gave me this tip in the 70's. I've used it a lot since.

That one is definitely going in my bag of tricks!

 

[Alan15578]

1. Lack of local model rocketry activity, especially lack of clubs and old style NAR contests.
2. cato
3. unsuitable weather

 

[mcderek]

Increasing cost of motors.

 

[caveduck]

I can deal with the rest of it but.........intermittent electronics due to some invisibly broken trace inside a PCB.

Also 3D prints where one of the linear rails gets gummy enough at the end of an 18-hour print to cause a big skew and wreck the thing.

I have been known to use profanity.

 

[bschultz32]

Bad weather that scrubs a launch event.
Alas, we are in an outdoor hobby and very much affected by the weather . . . .
Bob Schultz

 

[Grog6]

When I was young and dumb, a friend gave me a spool of wite, that came from some military rocket, designed to spool out behind the rocket for wire guidance.
My 20 yo (dumb assed) self thought it would be awesome to make a lightning strike, by launching in a thunderstorm.
A little closer, it would have been a multiple Darwin award. That was simultaneously the loudest and brightest thing I've ever seen. I really don't recommend it.

 

[bad_idea]

Aside from soldering - the fear of which I've recently gotten over to the point I'm even starting to enjoy it - I procrastinate on cutting fins more than any other thing. Even though they usually turn out to be less of a hassle than I fear, I never can get them to come out the way I want. Maybe I need to buy a laser cutter.

After that, sanding, especially sanding things that need to move freely in a body tube, e.g., pistons and fully internal avbays.

Tripoli certifications expire five years after membership elapses. It used to be a year but a few years ago we changed it to five.
After two years L2 and L3 members must retake the L2 written test.

Steve, are lapsed L3s allowed to refly their previous L3 rocket, or do they go through the whole plan/build process with TAPs? (This isn't relevant to me now and wouldn't be for a long, long time if ever, I'm just curious.)

When RC airplane events coincide with regional launches and you're addicted to both hobbies.

I would see a couple of my favorite rocket folk a lot more if I were into RC or they weren't.

 

[Mugs914]

I had a hard time thinking of anything I would consider the "worst" thing because I always looked at it all as just being part and parcel of the hobby, but after some consideration I think I have determined what it would be for me:

Recovery trekking.

I'm not talking about having a long-ish walk to pick up my bird, though a half mile walk out and back through a freshly plowed corn field can result in a rather tiring and unintentional "leg day".

I'm talking about the "climb the pipe rail gate, walk 200 yards across the field, scramble through the barb wire (no gate) so you can climb through the creek to get to the all-but impassable thicket of trees and brambles to get to where your rocket is hanging Just out of reach in a tree and then try to hack it down" type recovery trek.

Then of course, once you've got it in hand (and to paraphrase the old Haynes automotive manuals), "return is the reverse of these steps".

Ugh...

 

[stymye2]

Karens nearby

 

[Steven]

Forgetting where I put everything. I just found my computer.

 

[tim cubbedge]

Recovery.