Model Rockets with the Scouts

So this is the flight of one of the PVC based rockets the boys made. I think this one had a C6-3 engine in it. In the final pictures, it’s just barely visible, you have to follow the plume of smoke to see it. In the field, we never lost site of it. I’m thinking it went about 300 feet high, maybe 500?

Given that, the PVC rockets are tanks. The parachutes failed on all of them because the ejection explosion wasn’t enough to overcome the friction of the chutes against the walls of the PVC. Yet every single one of them survived the fall back to Earth.

Here’s the takeoff for the boy’s kit rocket. Notice the difference in height versus the PVC rocket. The Wife took these pictures and just held the button down for both sequences of pictures, so it provides a nice contrast in liftoff acceleration and velocities. The liftoff weight of the PVC rockets was about 5.5 ounces, while that of the kit rockets was closer to 2.5 ounces.

By the fourth picture here, the rocket is nearly gone from view. Again, contrast with the fourth picture above, which should represent about the same amount of elapsed time from liftoff.

I can only guess how high it got. In person, I lost track of it, though I did see the parachute ejection explosion. Didn’t get that in the pictures though.

Here, the Wife managed to catch it during its descent back to Earth. The final shot is of the boys recovering the rocket, just to give a gauge of how far away it landed.

No pictures of the boys. It would be impossible to capture the elation they were experiencing anyway. I did my best to describe it though, here.