April 3 1999 Launch Report

This was our first launch after watching October Sky and getting interested in rockets.  We bought an Estes Alpha III starter kit.  Here's the rocket on the pad ready to launch.


It flew great, in that we were able to recover it to launch another day!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cloning and enhancing another classic - Space Shuttle with boosters

Image
OpenRocket simulation of my boosted Space Shuttle in flight Back when I was a BAR99 (born-again rocketeer in 1999) I built and launched an Estes #1284 Space Shuttle  in October 1999.  It was a complicated kit, with 54 steps.  The final rocket flew on a C6-3 to about 200 feet then the shuttle separated and sort of glided back to the ground, with the main rocket recovered with its own 18" parachute.  I flew it successfully a couple times and is still on my shelf.  Estes sold this kit from 1976 to 1998, and it's occasionally available now for exorbitant fees on eBay and elsewhere. I've been intrigued by something Apogee Components released a couple of years back that allows us to attach booster rockets to a main rocket that will fall away after from the main rocket after their booster engines are exhausted.  The original Estes Space Shuttle used the "boosters", which were glued on, to hold stabilizing fins that could be removed for display but provided noth...
Read more

Looking back on 2024

Image
Well, it's been an exciting year.  In addition to becoming a grandfather and going to half-time at work, I started the year learning to use my new 3D printe r .  I've used the printer to build rockets that are no longer available, learned how to combine my OpenRocket skills to 3D print novel or experimental rockets as well as printing things for my wife's gardening hobby, printing things inspired by her love of the Grateful Dead and printing things for my daughters.  For Halloween, some of our neighbors had rats (we think it's caused by the construction of Northwestern's new football/concert stadium) so we were asked by our Village not to put out real pumpkins.  As a solution, I 3D printed a Grateful Dead-themed Halloween pumpkin: I'm currently printing a (late) Grateful Dead-themed Christmas present for my wife.  This is my first four color 3D print, based upon what I learned printing multicolor coasters for Valentine's Day for my wife.  This involves pri...
Read more

3D printing a Star Wars X-Wing!

Image
I've had some printer problems in the past month where the print head kept moving but nothing was coming out.  After a lot of Googling and anguish I figured out I needed to replace the nozzle on the print head and how to do it when the filament was stuck and wouldn't retract.  Anyway, I'm back in business now. NCR X-Wing Fighter from 1996 Estes Catalog I came across a cool looking build thread on The Rocketry Forum entitled X-Wing Fighter Builds . The author, The Red Darren, was going through several different iterations of 3D printing and building a Star Wars X-Wing using balsa for the fins.  He's still perfecting his project, but shared a couple of STL files  which got me interested.  I printed the parts, which are meant to be assembled like shown here : I quickly recognized the solid parts would be hard to turn into a rocket.  I'd made a couple of attempts at using my printer's ability to print in "vase mode", where one thin continuous layer is prin...
Read more