Once I let the oldest launch her first rocket, she was hooked! We spent the rest of the morning burning up about $40 of engines in the rockets. I’d been trying to get her to at least join us to see if she would like to get into model rocketry. Being a ‘girl’ she insisted that she could not because it’s a ‘boy thing’. Happily she disposed of that preconception and was soon anxious to build her own rocket!

After a birthday party event, we headed to the hobby shop to let her pick out whatever rocket she wanted to build. After much deliberation, she selected the ‘Viking Research’ multi-configuration rocket used by the schools (this is probably the same kit I built in Jr. High School!).

It did not take long to go through the checklist and get the number of fins selected (options ranged from 3 to 5) and which way to mount them on the body tube (there are 4 different ways to mount them, which means you can come up with some interesting designs!).

This is what she decided upon:


A couple of days later, once everything was dried, a few coats of primer were applied and the final color painted we had this gem of a rocket! I look forward to flying it this weekend, and I think she does too!

A few other rockets are in the boxes, ready to be built. But first a couple of the already constructed models need some work. The most urgent of which is the little Swift 220.

After the first launch, we lost it for a while! It took 30 minutes to find the thing. And the reasons were clear.

• It was painted a color far too dark, so we lost it in the sky
• The dark green and yellow paint on the body made it very difficult to spot on the field
• My little ‘extra’ fins changed the rockets CG to the degree that it was not able to ‘tumble’ back to earth, but instead came down like a dart.

As you might guess, this was hard to find! This is what it looked like when we finally found it!

After stripping off the extra fins, and sanding to take off the dark paint.. we have this little mess. Lots of work to do on such a little rocket.