Weird hobbies

[dlobom]

I spend large sums of money to keep small animals in artificial habitats, feeding them smaller animals...

Weird enough?

 

[dlobom]

I build and fly rockets. They are constructed out of fiberglass, plastic, aluminum, and in some cases carbon fiber and kevlar composites. Mine are mostly for fun and stay under 5000' in altitude, but some go over 20,000'.

The first photos are of an all-fiberglass rocket, my most performance oriented rocket. It is capable of breaking mach and reaching over 12,000' with the right motor (a "K" impulse motor), but I have only flown it on smaller "I" motors.

The second photo is of "Chester's Cheeto Chaser III". I like building oddball rockets so I came up with this. Subway gave away space-suit clad Chester Cheeto bendies several years ago and I had a few lying around. One thing led to another and he ended up in a rocket. This is the third rocket piloted by Chester and he is still in good shape.

Most people think it is weird, but then again, so is having fish tanks all over your house.

AWESOME!

 

[Dan F]

Dan: Damn nice. Is that an electric parachute control or a camera?

It is a flight computer, which is a combination of altimeter/accelerometer/parachute control. A lot of people do fly cameras, definitely a project for the future.

That's awesome. I remember building some of these as a kid, but nothing on that scale.

With that kind of altitude, how often are you able to recover them? Do you GPS track them?

I have lost a few rockets, but for the most part they come back. We fly in huge open areas, but even so the higher fliers use either GPS or radio tracking devices.

AWESOME!

Thanks!