Model Rocket Clubs

I’ve not done it myself but when I lived in Ely the model plane club that used the old racecourse had a few members that also did rocketry. Some of their models were huge, 6ft or more and very impressive to watch going up.

I’m pretty certain that they had to get permission for the larger rockets as they went very high and could do some serious damage to a small plane, or a big one for that matter.

Damn, that looks like a website from 1995!

The info seems good though so looks they spend more time on rockets than site design!!!

Yes I played about with the Jetx motors in days gone by. They were really rockets not jets I was told at the time their fuel was based on picric acid, though how it was ‘detuned’ to be a safer rocket fuel from its explosive roots I have no idea. I had more success with models using compression ignition engines.

Hi Tippon

Look on here https://www.modelrockets.co.uk/shop/  there are some small starter kits on there.

If you want it for the children then you could make a start with a water rocket.

Ed P wrote:

Richard we were both wrong on the composition of Jetex fuel: “Jetex rocket engines were quite popular with model airplane, boat, and car builders through the early 1970s, at which point the fuel supplies began to disappear. Most Internet sources posit that Imperial Chemicals Industries (ICI) ceased making the fuel pellets due to a combination of liability and regulation issues. ICI, based in Scotland, manufactured the Jetex fuel pellets* from a measured blend of guanidine nitrate, 2,4-dinitroresorcinol, potassium nitrate (aka saltpeter), iron oxide, kaolin, and asbestos. Today, obtaining the required chemicals, or even doing an Internet search for them (as I just did), will probably get you a big red flag in the Department of Homeland Security’s database. There are probably a couple agents on the way to my house as I write this.”

I am not surprised that I was wrong, back in the 1950s information was scarce as you had to rely on paper publishing or word of mouth. It was a circle I fell out of touch with by about 1962.

For purely fun types of rocket there were the pump driven types that were simply pressurised with said pump or the non pyrotechnic ones that relied on weak acid and something like bicarbonate of soda. I saw one demonstrated in the channel 4 programme on food last night. They both have the advantage of no fire risk.

All the fun went out with Elf & Safety, coupled with Nanny state anti-firework legislation. Almost certainly as a result there are far fewer Chemistry graduates than used to be the case. (in the noughties about half the chemistry courses were shut down)

I blew up one of the school toilets with a large lump (25% of a boiling tube) of nitrogen triodide that I was attempting to dispose of down the pan. I never did own up how the pan got broken and turned purple. Still those were the days when they were still training us to be either cannon fodder or bomb-disposal erks in NS, so investigations were of a very limited nature!

[edit] the result was that I became a chemical engineer and probably paid back the lavatory many times over in taxes.

Rockets, beer and dyslexic people, sounds like a really fun way to die. Lol.

Just cos you can’t spell don’t mean your thick. In the 80s it meant you was thick. Though I was in mostly top classes, except for English, but also wasn’t bottom. Amazingly  I was in top set for friggin French. I can’t write a word of it. I can read it enaotj to get along, and speak it (sort of) , find it hard to understand in mid France. May be a accent issue, but dam they speak quick. I can’t distinguish the end of one word to the start of the next. Probably lick a midlander trying to understand two scousers in mid flow. I did have a mate form Cumbria when in the forces, couldn’t understand a word he said. Sure he spoke a different language.

Back to rockets, if I had a garage maybe! but I know I’d only end up losing my figures eventually. So as much as it’s up my street, I probably wouldn’t.

The row of houses oppersite mine as a child, got burnt down when a lad a couple of years older than me (I was about 9), set fire to hiscdedoom, and took 3 of the 5 houses with it. Put me, and defo my mother, off chemistry sets.

Shame as my eldest loves it, and we (and he) didnt even know till his collage, and ended up doing it at uni, (drugs and dna, that’s the course and not the night life, tho I imagine it was also the night life) and just this week finished he’s final assessments as a trainee chemist with boots.

He is off to live in Aus in June, he got his dates last month. His mums happy and not, at the some time. I’m just happy for him. At least we got one right.

Richard wrote:

Way back when, I also knew a school chum and we dabbled in such delights with things that went bang. I did not see him for a while and when I called round to find out what he was doing, his elder brother called me aside. It appears that he had been mixing a batch of one of his brews when he ground things a bit too hard. it caught fire in the bowl and expelled the burning mixture into his face.

One of my teachers did that, very nearly lost an eye but she had the proper safety gear on and a shard of beaker got stuck in her visor about 1mm from her eye. No visor and it would have been very messy.