That is why you need Radio Control.
I found the huge ‘Mosquito’ in the Aerotech Rocketry catalogue (.pdf file). It’s on page 9 (not as a kit for sale, but on a page on propellant types) and appears to be about eight feet tall. 
Recently I looked up office supplies online and somehow on the first page of hits was a supplier for model rockets. Made me think it would be interesting to try sometime, I’d just need to find some flat open desert here in Northern Ireland first 
It really is an interesting hobby. The building of a rocket is a satisfying pastime. A finished rocket is aesthetically pleasing. (You may note that I prefer the ‘classic’ designs, though there are also scale- and semi-scale models as well as fantasy kits that are also attractive.) You can get kits that are complicated or simple. The ones I like require that you sand the fins (and nose cones, in the case of ‘vintage’ kits), build the motor mount (a simple matter of gluing rings onto a tube, one of which usually holds a metal clip), attaching the shock cord (folding an elastic cord into a paper holder and gluing it inside of the body tube and attaching the other end to the nose cone), putting shroud lines onto the parachute (with adhesive discs) and tying it to the nose cone, gluing on the fins and launch tube, and painting. Some kits (such as the Estes Alpha III) are even simpler. They have pre-moulded fins and a matching nose cone. Or if you want something really simple, there are rockets that are ‘Ready To Fly’.
Once it’s built, there’s the excitement of flying. Your rocket sits on the pad, and you hook up the ignition wires. You put the key into the control box. Maybe you have a countdown. You push the button. There’s a little hiss as the ignitor lights, then whoosh! Up your rocket goes on a tail of smoke and fire! You watch it climb and wait for the white smoke that helps you track the speck. Will the ejection charge fire? Of course it will. But you wait for it anyway. When it fires, will the parachute or streamer eject? What if you packed it too tightly? What if you’ve left the 'chute in the body tube too long and didn’t spread it out and dust it with talc? What if it doesn’t fully deploy? But of course, you’ve seen to all of that. The 'chute deploys and the rocket drifts downward. I wonder how the winds aloft are? Where will it land? Will I lose the rocket in a tree? And then you recover it, safe and sound. Back to the pad to install another engine and fly again!
For launching, you don’t really need a flat, open desert. The documentary I mentioned (the one with the BIG rockets) showed rockets being launched from a corn field. Smaller rockets, like Estes and Centuri, can be flown from school yards or athletic fields or parks. Just make sure that local laws allow it. (UncleRojelio mentioned the NAR. If you have something similar in Ireland, they can help you find a launch site; or your hobby dealer can direct you.)
Man, I’ve got to start building rockets again! I have plenty of unbuilt kits around here, in addition to the ‘classic’ ones that are on their way.
My favorite is the Estes Tomcat, I flew the one I built 20 - 30 times in the two years I had it. 
The last flight was on an AreoTech D13 (18mm reloadable motor) more power isn’t always better. It blew the wings off on liftoff. :eek:
Pics of one like mine:
Tomcat ready for liftoff and Tomcat in glide mode
I bought another kit off of ebay, but I haven’t built it yet.
a small sample of my fleet. I tried to find a picture of the Barbie Rocket but I don’t have one handy. It’s pink, a little over 7 feet tall and has astronaut Barbie as the payload. It even has a window for Barbie to look out of. We’ve flown it twice on AeroTech H268R motors, when we get the chance we’re going to send her up over a mile AGL. It’s built for it, it’s just the recovery could be a couple miles away so we need a 4 wheeler to retreive her.
My 11yo daughter and I fly when ever we get the chance. she designs her own now. 
And posting again just to subscribe :smack:
I’d like to add that each and every rocket is its own unique engineering problem. You can make it as difficult or as easy as you wish, but in the end, it still needs to fly straight with the pointy end pointed up. For the computer oriented rocket scientists, there are simulation and design programs to help you push the envelope. My favorite is RockSim (now also for Mac).
Oh, to see the drunk who witnesses landing…
VenusProbe: I’ve always assumed your username was from the actual probes that had landed on Venus (Venera), e.g.) Is your username actually taken from the model rocket?
It’s actually not from the model rocket, that’s just what I tell polite company, but probing is involved.
Back to rockets, Barbie was designed using RockSim 5, I heartily recommend it. We simmed the flight several times to choose the correct motor/delay and I have to say it flew exactly like it simmed! Parachute at apogee just as it layed over, absolutely perfect. I have video of the first Barbie flight I just need to get it captured.
I love Rocktry!
I thought you were whoosing us.
But…how does she get all that hair into the helmet?
Actually this is what our Astronaut Barbie wore for her two flights.
I wonder how many versions there were.
I missed the cool rocket stuff because I became interested as an adult.
Friends who were young enthusiasts put a mouse in the payload rocket…the one you were supposed to launch an egg in, marked “do not place live animals…”
So, if you could get Barbie to eject with her own parachute…
We actually bought HALO Joe for that, seriously I have a two stage logging altimeter thats smaller than a Estes D engine I purchased just for that purpose.
Ad Astra!
We built these at the start of the year in eighth grade science class.
I had moved to Minneapolis from Baltimore the day before school started, and began everything in rather a rush. As a result I was in all the wrong classes (in that school district at that time, they separated classes by “ability”). It was all corrected about a week into the school year…
… however, the model rocketry unit was being done in groups of three. The two guys I’d joined up with in my original class, of course, needed the rocket that we’d ordered for their project, so I was without a rocket or a group in my new class. So the teacher, who was not only a barking seal of a swim coach but also a 5’1" former Special Ops soldier, said, “Okay, kid. It’s too late to get you a kit–we’ve already sent of the orders. What I’m going to do is this: When the kits come, you get to pick through my big box o’ spare parts [he actually called it something like that] and build one of your own.”
So the kits come, and the big box o’ spare parts is revealed. For some reason, a particular small, plainish fuselage called out to me, and I claimed this 14 inch wonder and a set of three small fins.
Along with this, I claimed three (3) engine housings.
I ended up getting an ‘A’ for trying something different with my three-engine frankenrocket (which, so I was told, actually should’ve been pretty aerodynamic), even though only two of the three engines fired and it went about 18 feet in the air before heading into a long parabola, featuring an almost sideways stint through the crowd of my new classmates.
They were less than impressed.
I ended up failing that class for two consecutive quarters on account of turning in zero homework assignments, so said teacher was forced to kick me out. He kept looking out for me though, put me in one of his other classes and had me help him out with the teaching. Good times, and folks like him were the only reason I didn’t drop out and end up freebasing somewhere.
Sorry to hijack, but damn, you had a cool science class. My 9th grade science experience consisted of looking at minerals through microscopes in the Rocks For Jocks class (Thanks, computer-generated class schedule) and programming the already obsolete TRS-80 in the classroom in the school’s leaky basement (I swear I’m not making this up.).
Which goes a long way in explaining why I’m a librarian and not a physicist.
This sounds like something I’ll have to try (Do these kits come with their own nuclear payload, or does that cost extra?).
I was a lab assistant for a science class in ninth grade. (In San Diego, 9th grade was still in junior high.) I got to watch Mr. Keefer do his schtick. To illustrate the dangers of alcohol, which was used in the burners, he cleaned off his desk, poured alcohol on it, and lit it on fire. The flames were invisible, but became visible when he asked that the lights be turned off. He nattered calmy on about how careful the class had to be since the flames wouldn’t be seen with the lights on, etc., while the flames burned in front of him. He also lit some magnesium on fire to illustrate how hot it burns and how hard it was to put out.
I checked eBay, and there are three of these on offer. Two are Buy-It-Now ‘auctions’ at $55. The third has a starting bid of $29.99, no reserve, no current bids, and a Buy-It-Now price of $45. Dang, those are expensive!
I bought an Estes Alpha III Phantom on eBay. This is an Alpha III made of clear plastic so that you can see the inside of a typical model rocket. For display only, of course. I never wanted one of these when I was a kid, because it didn’t fly. I like it now, though. Since the seller is so close, it may arrive today. Tomorrow at the latest.
The seller sent me a link to his rocketry page. He’s built a Bomarc missile that appears to be about eight feet long. I liked the Bomarc when I was a kid, since it looked so cool. Lots of rocket pics on his page!
Estes Saturn V rocket. These guys go for big bucks on eBay. Too much for my interest at this time. I saw Dr. Zooch’s Saturn V (out of stock, incidentally) and the copy says:
Say, that sounds pretty good! And there might be another production run (or at least, that’s what I hoped). Why spend ‘an arm and a leg’ for the Estes model, when I could get a better model for $21?
And then I saw that it’s only 18" tall. Wasn’t the Estes model twice that? On a related note: What was the length of Estes’s Saturn IB?
Has anyone here built the Estes Saturn V model, and is Dr. Zooch accurate when he claims that it was ‘crap’?
Low Powered Rocketry
I choose to stay with lpr.I love the exotic models of deep space transport vehicles, and the scale models of some of the manned US spacecraft.I have no desire to jump to mid and high powered rocketry.Just my choice I guess.
Call it living in the past.I don’t believe I will ever get over those old Estes kits.
Nothing better than going out on the weekend and launching a few.No applying for permits.No planning the launch weeks maybe even months in advance.Just get out there and do it.Chasing them down and jumping fences, climbing trees to retrieve is just as much part of it as launching them.Thanks.
Eric