In any event, I never thought I would have this rocket finished but I built an extended Nike Smoke (Polecat Aerospace – 10-inch) – added a 4-ft airframe so it is now just over 16-ft tall. It will weigh in at under 110-lbs fully loaded. Everything was fiber glassed and it is built like a rock just like my 20-ft DINOSAURS ROCK-et EXTREME (I am bringing this rocket to display at NERRF only).

Here are some of the details:

16-ft Nike Smoke
Weight Loaded: under 110-lbs
Planned Motor: Cesaroni M3100 White Thunder (6118 NS)
Dual Deploy – 4-ft drogue at apogee, 20 or 24-ft main at 1000 ft., backup at 800 ft.; 14-ft chute for the Nose Cone.
RockSim Altitude shows just under 3000-ft which is exactly what I like as you can see everything.
Two Perfect Flight Altimeters
I’ll send a photo later this week

I will bring it on Friday so you or any of the METRA Board Members can inspect it and feel comfortable about allowing me to fly it on Saturday.

To start off, a lot of you have heard your kids talk about rockets they may have built in camp or are working on in school - most of which are relatively simple to build and look like this:

ASTRO-1 from Semroc. This was actually the very first rocket I ever built as a kid.

 These are fun to build and easy to fly and recover.  Should you so desire, you can move from these types of rockets to the ones you see below in due time:

Go ahead and check out some of the cool videos on this website to get you motivated and then head right over to the Rocketry Library to download some Free Manuals to get you jump started in this really cool hobby.