How did everyone get started?

[Spaceman Spiff]

I was asking this on the group earlier today and thought I'd catch those of you who are only on this forum.

I just wanted to start a fun topic where you guys could all share how you got interested in this water rocket stuff. I think it would be great to find out how everyone else "discovered" this "addiction". Anyone care to share?

Looking forward to your responses!

[U.S. Water Rockets]

Our story is pretty well documented on our website. Do you really want to have it re-hashed again here?

[Drag_Racer408a]

No but could you post a link to where we coudl read it?

[CubmasterDax]

Was looking for a Pack event for our 50 Cub Scouts. I had heard of water rockets and looked it up online. Then once the committee approved it I went and spent 64$ and built 10 launchers. Passed them out to our Dens after a Pack Meeting Demonstration.

Our event is in July. So that gives them plently of time to come up with some good designs.

So far.. I have had our Den out and have reached about 400 ft. with a 16.8 oz and about 550 with a 2L.

We shot one for distance and got about 400 ft across a field at a park.

I will post pics of the event when we have it.

I am looking to build the launcher computer but it looks daunting. Anyone have a WELL DOCUMENTED site showing the tommy timer method? I found pics online but nothing specifically detailing out how to make it work.

Thanks in advance.

Cubmaster Castro
ourpack49.com

[Tim Chen]

Was looking for a Pack event for our 50 Cub Scouts. I had heard of water rockets and looked it up online. Then once the committee approved it I went and spent 64$ and built 10 launchers. Passed them out to our Dens after a Pack Meeting Demonstration.

Our event is in July. So that gives them plently of time to come up with some good designs.

So far.. I have had our Den out and have reached about 400 ft. with a 16.8 oz and about 550 with a 2L.

We shot one for distance and got about 400 ft across a field at a park.

I will post pics of the event when we have it.

I am looking to build the launcher computer but it looks daunting. Anyone have a WELL DOCUMENTED site showing the tommy timer method? I found pics online but nothing specifically detailing out how to make it work.

Thanks in advance.

Cubmaster Castro
ourpack49.com

Welcome!

I know I have seen a realy good site with pics of a Tomy timer deploy. I will look for it and post the link.

(Yes, it's really called a Tomy Timer. Tomy is the name of the company that made all those wind-up toys, and so the timer is named after them!)

[Tim Chen]

I am looking to build the launcher computer but it looks daunting. Anyone have a WELL DOCUMENTED site showing the tommy timer method? I found pics online but nothing specifically detailing out how to make it work.

ourpack49.com

I just realized you may have had the name wrong and didn't turn up much on the Tomy Timers. There's a number of good sources I turned up with a serach:

waterrocket.uh-lab.de/tomytimers.htm

http://www.geocities.com/wrgarage/timer.htm

hometown.aol.com/powerdeployment/VDTT.html

Good luck!

[Tim Chen]

http://www.waterrocket.uh-lab.de/tomytimers.htm

http://www.geocities.com/wrgarage/timer.htm

http://www.hometown.aol.com/powerdeployment/VDTT.html


Sorry... I messed up the links!

[Bonami]

[quote="Spaceman Spiff"]I was asking this on the group earlier today and thought I'd catch those of you who are only on this forum.

I just wanted to start a fun topic where you guys could all share how you got interested in this water rocket stuff. I think it would be great to find out how everyone else "discovered" this "addiction". Anyone care to share?

Looking forward to your responses!

[U.S. Water Rockets]

What was that Bonami? Your message was garbled.

[Bonami]

What was that Bonami? Your message was garbled.

My apology. I hit the wrong thing and sent by mistake.

[tsumrall]

It was 1985. I was working at the Area Maintenance Support Facility in Greenwood Mississippi.

A co-worker showed up with a pin-pull launcher and a naked 2L bottle. He put in some wtaer, pumped it up and let it fly.

That same day I had a launcher built and my 3 sons and I launched all weekend.

This was pre-internet for me so I had no guides to help further the idea. After a while I drifted to other interests.

13 years later (gads!) I searched for water rockets on the net and saw that 1000ft had been broken!

I was hooked for good. I played with every early design that was out there but it wasn't long before pop bottles just wasn't getting it so I started building with with FTC. I flew my first FTC rocket in Sep 2001.

I'm currently prototyping a ...

[Brian]

when i was really young i always liked to make stuff, experiment and design things. but as i grew older i got bored. i needed more of a challenge instead of sticky taping 2 boxes together or designing these farfeched things. i dicovered match rockets but they didn't go high and they were hard to launch. but i tryed to make them better. as i kept researching rockets i discovered water rockets. i thought they were to hard until i learnt more about them. my first water rocket was a bottle with a sprinkler system but it was real heavy. then i made a pop top lid bottle rocket that launched a 300ml bottle 3 times higher than the power lines (alot higher than before). i did alot of experiments with my little water rockets but i hadn't launched large high flying rockets so last week i made a launcher out of a wine bottle calk (works well apart from a small leak). i'll hopefully launch this rocket on friday (15th)

do you have any tips for me.

[Brian]

i can't launch my new water rocket because i blew it up. so i decided to just launch a 2.25L bottle but than i realised that i also blew up the bike pump connecter as well.
for more detales check out the topic 'DANGER!.'

[CSAldridge]

I had my first water rocket quite a long time ago and looked very similar to U.S. Water Rockets picture there, except mine was a clear red plastic rocket instead of green but the launcher part looked just like that. I tried making one out of a 2 liter bottle back then just to see if i could do it, but i was never able to come up with a way to pressurize it successfully.

seeing all these newer designs for launchers is what is getting me interested again.

[monboy10]

I was asking this on the group earlier today and thought I'd catch those of you who are only on this forum.

I just wanted to start a fun topic where you guys could all share how you got interested in this water rocket stuff. I think it would be great to find out how everyone else "discovered" this "addiction". Anyone care to share?

Looking forward to your responses!

i got interested modle rockets from a camp that i go to and i still fly modle rockets but i wanted to save some money so i became interested in water rocketts. i have played with water rockets for a long time but mostly they were launched by a tire valve and a cork. then i built a thing that held the bottle onto a cork and it worked better than the other one. now i have built a cable tie launcher and it works great.

with the simple cork ones my uncle who lives in BC and travles alot and he asked me how to make one so i told him. then the next time he came he was telling me that he stayed in this one hotle for a while and there was this one kid who he said looked bord so he taught him how to make a simple water rocket and he said that when he had left he was still playing with it and he loved it.