My nephew went on his first Cub Scout camping trip this weekend. I was at his first pack meeting (his Dad was traveling for business that week) and they talked about this trip and how they will be shooting off rockets. I can't wait for my 2 year old to get into Scouting so I will be the Dad and not the fill in Uncle. :camperkid:
I immediately thought of the soda bottle rockets I shot off when I was in Scouts. That is not what my nephew did. They bought $25 rockets and then you had to buy fuel for another $10. Not that I'm sure that wasn't cool, but my nephew wound up with the wrong fuel so he couldn't launch his and after the fuel is gone, thats it. I remember shooting the soda bottles until we lost them or had a blowout from pumping them with too much air.
The setup that I remember was one PVC fitting with an air stem on one end to "charge" it and the other key piece was a U shaped piece of metal (or clip) that went around the collar of the soda bottle. You pull the clip and off it went.
Since this is totally a homemade thing, I am sure there are different launchers. What have you done or seen?
My nephew's pack has a family trip in the Spring that I can go on (the fall trip was a Dad/Parent and Son event) and I want to have a Soda Bottle Rocket launcher ready :rock:
Matt O 2006 Skyline Nomad 27' travel trailer. Previously owned 1986 Coleman Columbia / 1992 Coleman Senecca / 1989 Born Free Class C RV.
Slade, was it a big contraption or was it just a small fitting? The ones I have seen have been huge. I haven't found any real good ones on youtube yet. I found a good one yesterday but then the fins broke off, it didn't launch, and then he had a parachute that never worked either.
I don't want to have a huge launch contraption.
Do you have any pics of yours?
Matt O 2006 Skyline Nomad 27' travel trailer. Previously owned 1986 Coleman Columbia / 1992 Coleman Senecca / 1989 Born Free Class C RV.
My nephews (Scouts) learned to use just empty 2L soda bottles, add a little bit of water and pump air in with a bike pump. This certainly works, though I don't think it's very controllable (I have a big dent in my shed from this endeavor, though I'm thankful it hit the shed rather than going 5 degrees off to the right or left and hitting my neighbor's house, though shame on me for thinking that their setup would never, ever work). For this method, though, they were holding the soda bottles horizontally so the water didn't leak out; maybe to get the bottles to fly vertically you'd need a means of closing the bottle (cap or stopper) with a tube for putting air in?
Here are some pictures
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Complete setup
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Close up of attachment point
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Without the bottle. I just drilled a hole through the stopper and then mounted it on the bracket. Adjust the bracket height to ensure a tight fit.
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Just attach a bike pump to the fitting, put water in the bottle, mount, secure and then pump it up. Pull the pins and watch it fly.
We didn't do anything special with the bottles, no fins or anything else. The kids had great fun just blasting them off.
So....do you have to build one or just have one. If you would like, IM me your address and I will send it to you. You can go to the Niagara Falls rally and bring it back to me. 😀
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