paulsen

My Feedback: (2)

I love these you lightem tossem and they glide out real smooth while the fuse is burning, than they shoot off and climb like hell.The only catch is they blow up all the nose weight and than tumble down.

mclintock

My Feedback: (3)

i believe you can get bottle rockets that don't pop at the end of the burn, they are the ones 'without report' or something..

Your gliders are way better than mine, where I used to just tape the rocket motor pulled from the bottle rocket onto the bottom of one of the common guillows gliders that came in a plastic bag. The guillows balsa glider weighed a bit too much for the bottle rocket to really power much- if I remember right. Looked cool tho for about two seconds!

I think the kind that pop 'with report' are safer, as the expolsion tends to put out the fire in the pine straw and dry leaves sometimes.

Has anyone fleshed out the boyhood dream of making a rocket launcher using bottle rockets and put it on a 1/2 a rc plane, able to launch rockets in flight? Might be a thing for the electric realm, as the motor battery would make a good current source to light the fuse using thin wire.

BMatthews

I've thought about it but lighting off unguided rockets is specifically mentioned in the MAAC and AMA (someone posted about this here at RCU) safety codes as being expressly forbidden. No insurance for you if you do.

Some show models have done it but I gather they get a special waiver.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Instead of skeet shooting clay pigeons, aiming at little gliders would be a,[ahem] BLAST!

XJet

Unfortunately the politically correct idiots running my country have decided in their infinite wisdom that bottle-rockets (and most other forms of fireworks) are simply too dangerous for the mere public to buy or use.

It's now illegal to possess these weapons of mass destruction so the days of my youth, when I used to tie these things onto chuck-gliders and even stack them to get multi-stage rockets, will forever be a distant memory.

Sometimes I hate living in a Nerf-world where the government decides it needs to protect us from ourselves every minute of the day.

mclintock

My Feedback: (3)

....guess now that toy fireworks are owtlawed, you'll need to make your own!

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

They are technically illegal here, but you can buy anything you want on the indian reservations. They are allowed to sell within 2 weeks of the 4th of July, and New Years' Day. The most wicked ones are the little helicopters that have a giant firecracker for a propellant, they have a report that sounds like a shotgun blast!

Ray 67

My Feedback: (1)

Combatpig,

Where is your home flying field? I would really like to meet you. I am so tired of the "let's all fly in circles and you can't do that bunch". Just a thought.

Ray 67

Clean

Reminds me of my youth, we all went out to the lake to shoot off fireworks. I in my infinate 9 year old wisdom had taped a bottle rocket and several firecrackers to a balsa chuck glider. I lit it, tossed it and it circled around a couple times and landed on the opposite side of a motorcycle policeman who pulled up without annoucnement and asked my sister if that was her car parked halfway on the road. About then, the fuse finally burned it's way through the tape that I had used all over the place and all the fireworks did their thing and it blew up next to the policeman who not so politely said, 'Move the #%#$# thing off the road, NOW!' and drove off, probably to change his undies

I haven't done it since.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

HI RAY67! I too come from a dysfunctional, "insidelooponlyARFtrainerafraidtolookstupid" club. I have a little strip of land near HWY 9 , just west of the new HAGGEN supermarket. I'll see you over in PM land to arrange a CONFRONTATION!!BTW, you don't need to bring proof of AMA here, just proof that you can out run the cops![8D]!

Japanman

Maybee a couple of bottle rockets strapped to your behind could help? I bet the thought of the imenant 'report' could speed up the run, too

J.M

P.S Xjet,
We can get double happys here in Japan as well as rockets. My wife gave me a few sideways looks when I came home with a stack of each. Those are for children, she said. Girls just don`t understand, do they?

xanaphyst

My Feedback: (17)

I used to live in Tokyo when i was younger....It seemed a bit odd to me even then that I could walk in a little candy shop, buy some fireworks, walk out on the sidewalk and light those suckers up next to a 10 lane highway with crossing lights.....the Japanese sure were some fun little people. Those candy shops had these long brown rectangle foam looking things that tasted great...what i wouldn't give for some now....

Hey Combatpigg...when are you going to have that little speed demaon up and running???

Clean

Shooting unguided rockets is specifically firing the rockets from your airplane as in a rocket propelled projectile. This is more of the Rocket boost glider and is a different subject that really comes down to intent. If you were producing a projectile that is one thing, but a boost glider is another, though I can't believe anyone actually wanting AMA insurance for a FF chuckglider. Don't see too many AMA forms down at the local QT where they sell them all day for a buck.


You don't need a special permit to use RATO on your airplane.

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

Clean, weren't you working on a JATO project sometime back? How did it come out?

jboy381-RCU

i was thinking about your gliders...is there any way to glue a piece of aluminum tube the size of the rocket to the nose...put the rocket in it...that might keep it from blowing all to he%^ when it get to the end of the boost...then agian it might turn into a grenade instead[]

john

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

HI XANAPHYST! I worked in YUKOSUKA for a couple of weeks and could not believe the vending machines that were out on the sidewalk full of 60 proof whiskey! The speed plane should be ready for my SONs' arrival MAY 24th.

toy264

We used to tape rockets to the gliders too-- you just poke a hole in the nose with a piece of the stick to keep 'em from exploding.
On the subject of the inate stupidity of rual 10 year-olds-- when e could afford them, we'd tape chery bombs or M-80's to the rubber band wind-up Jim Walker planes, light 'em up, toss, and watch 'em blow into balsa dust 30' up! I'm surprised I still have all my fingers.

jessiej

On the subject of the inate stupidity of rual 10 year-olds-- when e could afford them, we'd tape chery bombs or M-80's to the rubber band wind-up Jim Walker planes, light 'em up, toss, and watch 'em blow into balsa dust 30' up! I'm surprised I still have all my fingers.

I suppose it is just as well we were lucky rather than smart. Wolldn't have been as much fun otherwise.

jess

lwr_

When we got bored with taping them to Guilllows gliders we progressed to making bazookas out of round curtian rod tubes. You divide into two teams about 50 yards apart and commence to firing at each other. What a riot. When you are a kid and can't afford more expensive fun, a gross of pop bottle rockets is just the ticket you are looking for.

XJet

That's nothing :-)

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my latest book which, as it turns out, is largely autobiographical and documents my lifetime of fascination with things that go bang (just look at my avatar :-)

As well as nearly destroying a rented house after making nitroglycerine in the kitchen sink as a teenager, I supervised some of my more engineering-capable teenage friends in the task of making a 3-inch mortar from steam-pipe and several quite large rockets from similar materials.

The "active ingredient" in all these devices was a simple "white powder" (which is the same as black powder but uses sugar instead of carbon -- because it's quicker and simpler).

Suffice to say that although we had some stunning success with these devices, we were also very lucky to survive the effects of a total containment failure in the case of the largest rocket. I was knocked senseless by the concussion and the shirt I was wearing was actually blown right off me by the force of the blast. Fortunately not a single piece of the resulting schrapnel touched my body (phew).

But that's just one chapter of about 20 :-)

jessiej

Contributors to this thread who have not done so should by all means read "Rocket Boys", later renamed "October Skys" by Homer Hickham.

jess

flyinrog

My Feedback: (1)

I cant top Xjet (not big on flames) I did make gunpowder a few times,,, but as a dumb***** 10 year old,,with the church group at the beach in SC we snuck out at night,, bought bottle rockets and were headed to the dunes to shoot them towards the ocean,,,top of the dune look down to see a pole about the size of a telephone pole but only about 6 feet tall, so we decide to try and hit it with the bottle rockets ready..aim...fire.. that poor fella( I guess he was starring at the moon?)...ever see a pole sprout legs and run? he musta had to change his pants,, and being kids afraid of trouble we just ran the other way....Rog

Japanman

As a kids my brothers and I had a real Jerk as a next door neighbour. He had kids too, and he used to yell at them etc etc. Not a nice guy. He was quite well off though, and just after their new house was built, it was Guy Fawkes in N.Z.
The other side nextdoor neighbour (their house was 200m away from ours) had kids our age.. well on that day we were letting off fireworks- as were most of the other kids around- we had a few rockets, and one of them, after a good lauch, lost steam and began to fall , only to burst back into life and fly the 80m straight into the tiny gap under an open window of our Jerks house, land on the white shagpile carpet. I remember the muffled bang, but I don`t remember seeing it- we were too busy clearing away the evidence!!

Not 5 minutes later this guy came STORMING to our house (we weren`t there) and began to accuse us kids of the crime. My father, who is an honest man, told him that of course his kids would never do a thing like that! (I bet he relished telling that to him!) As it happened our neighbours parents had been out but arrived home in the interim- just in time to get the interrogation from mr jerk... of course being no evidence, WE hadn`t done it!!!

My brother and I told our father about this only a few years ago- you should have heard him laugh!

J.M

Clean

[link=http://www.northlandflyer.com/The_Hangar/Trainer40/trainer40.html]Rato Frontier 40[/link]

Used it constantly.