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What's the dumbest mistake you've made in rocketry? (Patreon)

Published:
2024-12-09 05:55:32
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Drop your stories below! We're discussing dumb mistakes we've made on the podcast this week!

Comments

Sean Cooper

When I was 13 I would rip my wild child on big 29mm motors every chance I got. Leaving Lucerne on a Sunday I had one laying around but the family wanted to hit the road. I convinced them I could go quickly and in my haste, forgot to tape the RF tracker to my shock chord.. eventually I did find the tracker in the dirt. The rocket though, was long gone.

DRS

I had my first altimeter with a charge go badly. I mounted my Blacksky AltAcc2 Altimeter. Double checked my BP charge. Put in a new 9 v battery in. Life was all good. Little did I know my altimeter bay was mounted upside down 🙃 in the rocket. I armed the AltAcc. Took the obligatory selfie with my rocket & turned it over to the LCO & rocket gods. 5-4-3-2-1 ignition and immediate deployment… WTF 🤬 The Blacksky detected -1 g instead of +3 g’s. It thought it was already at apogee and was already coming back down….. HOT. So the BP charge fired before it had even cleared the launch rail. The chute, nosecone and sustainer continued skywriting for another 50 feet until the Cesaroni H was done. To add insult to injury the Cesaroni backup motor charge popped 2 seconds after the hot mess laid in the gravel pit. I learned the value of an up ⬆️ sticker and sharpie mark that day. Al McCue Calgary Canada 🇨🇦 CAR S571 L3 / TRA 10540 L2

Joey Draney

I had taped my main chute to hold it together on my mach 2. I was lazy when it came time to launch it so I didn't figure to take out the chute and re pack it since I had just packed it that morning. Flight up went great and on the way down it Was falling at 70fps which of course was normal for drogue however when the altitude reached zero with the last packet still at 70fps I thought hmm that's not quite right Is it. Got to the rocket expecting to see the nose cone had not deployed... but no, there was my main chute, completely deployed and completely still taped. Felt pretty dumb for a while.

Larry Gegel

I forgot to drill the holes for and install the eye bolt in the upper centering ring of a 3” rocket. Fortunately, there was an extra inch or more of motor tube above the ring so I just made another ring, drilled it, put the eyebolt in and slid it into place.

Noah Lenihan

Just a few weeks ago I was gluing fins on with some thickened west systems. After 24 hours it hadn’t hardened yet and after some thinking I realized I hadn’t put the hardener in.

Rocket Prophet

Let’s just say that, I will not EVER forget to “install batteries PRIOR to launch”, again!…yeah…🤦🏻

DRS
>>157742550

Hope you had that resin stirred vigorously for 3 minutes.

Jesse botta

Thankfully worst I've done is built a Loc Hawk park flyer and was so excited to fly it. I forgot to take the stock rubber band off the chute!!! Bounce off the Ole bike path to fly again!!

ZeroGPrints

I had a really sketchy tape motor retention and well the rocket ejected the motor out the back and came in ballistic only a few feet from the pad. Lets just say that that Marco Polo tag is dead.

Andrew

I may or may not have accidentally installed a nozzle backwards in a snap ring EX motor and the rocket had a wacky flight. Took a turn right off the pad lol. Lesson learned 😂

Josh Sickles

Forgetting to attach or tighten quick links. Luckily that had never resulted in damage due to the part falling non ballistic and being made of fiberflass. Also forgetting to remove tape that wasn't ment to fly with the rocket. Fairly certain it was the cause of the loss of my rocket last launch after digging through the wreckage. And last. When using an RRC2 and only doing single deployment, don't use the main terminal, use the drogue terminal to deploy at apogee.

Ernesto

With great anticipation… I built an Iris 5.5…. Since I don’t know how to glass things yet AND the package said it would handle a “M” motor… (let me please say “it was a beautiful paint job”)… so why not??!!! ALL the senior guys kept telling me the motor was too much… but why would I listen to Wisdom? Perfect launch day. Perfect flight off the launch pad. Hit Max Q and then no longer perfect… let’s say about 1000 pieces of rocket to pick up!

Quentin Trull

Just recently I flew my 3" darkstar to around 10k feet. I decided it would be a great idea to just tape the eggfinder mini to the shock cord since I didn't have room in the av bay. Around the time we saw the apogee event, we lost connection to the tracker. We saw the rocket land behind a hill about a mile away and couldn't find it. After 3 search attempts across 3 weeks and about 20 hours of walking around, eventually we found the rocket. The tracker was still taped to the shock cord but the battery was unplugged. It must have disconnected when the shock cord had tension on it during drogue deploy. Definitely learned some lessons with that one.

Kris the RocketryNerd

I don’t have any ridiculous doozies but on my L1 attempt I decided to try a deployment bag for the first time and I was told I didn’t need a pilot chute on the bag but that the main would pop out on its own. Well it didn’t and the rocket crashed onto a popup and a truck and also damaged the rocket badly. I haven’t tried a DB ever since lol. Just burritos for this guy.

Jack Poehlman

Single flight, Failure #1, failed to plug in connection to main deployment charges on L Handicap attempt, Landicap. Failure #2, failed to recognize beep sequence from either altimeter indicating the lack of continuity to the main charges. Flight had a beautiful up on L952W, perfect drogue at apogee, No main deployment. Net damage, Nose cone shattered, most of lower body tube crumpled. Find can and middle body tube survived, rebuild too 2 sections of sonotube and a fresh nose cone print. Rocket did set a group EX record on it's first flight though https://tripoli.org/content.aspx?page_id=1537&club_id=795696&item_id=502818 The elusive L-Handicap will be claimed when the flying season returns.

DRS

Not the dumbest thing, but the most collateral damages. In today’s edition ✍🏼 of “dumb things AL has done” I’m going to relay the story of how I earned the nickname - “the fire marshall” at our club. October 2001. I put the turkey in the oven for Canadian Thanksgiving and then took my kids to meet some buddies to fly some LP models in a new community where the buggies and graders cleared the land but no new houses had been built yet. I took with me an assortment of rockets 🚀 with 1/2A, A, B and C - Estes motors. We lit about 20 flights all using my Estes solar 4 AA battery launch system. All was good and the kids were having a lot of fun. For the last flight I wanted to fly my new scratch built egg lofter powered by a cluster 3 x 1/2 A BP Motors. My first cluster attempt!! Little did I know, the solar launch system doesn’t have the amps to light clusters effectively- you should always light a clustered igniters with a car 12v with Amps or something similar. Well 1 of 3 motors lit and the rocket flew 20 feet The rocket quickly backslid to earth in about 3 seconds before the delay was done. The rocket landed in a 5 yard wide section of thigh-high tinder-dry grass. I’m thinking the motor’s ejection charge is going to blow so I quickly jog out to where it landed. 3 steps before I reached the rocket the ejection charge fired on the ground lit up like an old time BP flash in the pan. 💥 How much damage could it do? - Turns out lots. My buddies grabbed the two brooms we brought and franticly started beating the grass. Within 30 seconds we lost control and all that tinder dry grass was burning out of control. I phoned 911 to get the fire crew out. They said “what’s your emergency?” 🚨 “Fire Fire. We have a fire“ Dispatch asked: “Where are you?? What city??” I reply “Calgary”. It was the era of the Razr flip phone and the province had a system without location services. So I wait for 30 seconds while prov dispatch puts me on hold. Fire is growing 🔥🔥 5 Acres are now burning. (1 acres is roughly equivalent to to 1 football field incl end zones) I hear click, ‘Calgary 911 - What’s your emergency?? — Fire, medical or police’ I reply, “Fire Fire Fire 🚨 send trucks‼️“. I hear back “can you hold please while we connect you to fire services.” Click. Back on hold - Aargh. Meanhile 🔥🔥🔥 7 acres are now burning. 20 seconds later. CFD: “Calgary fire department, how can we help you?” Me: “Finally….. we have a large grass fire going. Send trucks.” CFD: “What’s your address?? “ ME: “we are on Everwillow Blvd” CFD: “where?” ME: “we are on Everwillow Blvd” CFD: “ please spell that” Me: “ I’m in a new subdivision looking at a green street sign. It says, E-v-e-r-w-i-l-l-o-w Blvd” CFD: “that’s not on our maps” WTF 🤬- EMS services had not updated their base map from the developer’s neighborhood plan. Aargh!!! . In the meantime we are up to about 10 acres of stubble now burning 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 CFD: “ describe your approximate location” Me: “ we are South of Fish Creek Prov Park. Near James McKevitt Trail. Send trucks.‼️ Tell them to follow the cloud of smoke. It will be obvious.” 2 minutes later we hear sirens 🚨 and within 5 minutes the first 3 trucks found us. It took about 12 minutes to get fire trucks there from that 1 teeny tiny innocent motor’s ejection charge. Once the first truck arrived we hear sirens from 4 more directions. Seems we had started a 5-Alarm fire. In those 15 minutes time we had burned about 25 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 acres of stubble. The property owner quickly started his tractor and harrowed a fire break around the other 15 acres. We were extremely lucky that the property had no vehicles, no buildings, no animals. We just launched a pretty serious major urban fire of wheat stubble. The city was anxious that if the fire jumped the two lane blacktop, it would have quickly got into Fish Creek Park. Fish Creek is the largest urban park in N America at 13.5 Sq Km. It has not had a burn since 1910 and the fuel load was huge. So the city dispatched 2 police helicopters. If the fire hit the park they would have had to bring in choppers with fire-fighting water buckets. After 90 minutes the action was almost done. I get a call from the CFD Fire Chief who was overseeing the events. CFD: “you called in the fire to 911. Tell me what happened.” Me: I recapped the events. I then asked, “do you need me to come in?? Fill in insurance claim forms. Anything Else? What else can I do??” CFD: he laughed. He said “You have already done enough damage for 1 day” Mic drop 🎤 Me: “Ouch!!” CFD: “You truly did the right thing. You called it in. You explained it was an accident. Many would have fled the scene. “ He went on, “There is no cost to you. Hopefully this is not a regular occurrence. This is why you pay property taxes— to fund emergency services. Our job is to fight fires and we are good at our job. We have your contact, we will call you if we need anything else.” I have never been so happy to be a taxpayer in my life!! 💸 We made the 11 pm local TV news The next day we had 1/2 a page coverage and were the lead on the city section, page B1 of the local newspaper. Lead paragraph was “A five alarm fire was responded to yesterday by 15 fire trucks, 4 Enmax power utility (we got pretty close to elec poles so they cut the power to 4 communities), 4 fish and wildlife, police, 2 police choppers and emergency paramedics. The fire was caused by unknown sources. “ Nice job!! Who say you can’t have phunnn with a 1/2 A motor. At the end of the day, the damage was mostly to my ego. We completely burned up 40 acres (1/4 section) and charred a few poplar trees and fence posts. The next spring was the property owner’s last crop on that 1/4 section before the land turned into another burb. I have never seen such an emerald green crop in my life. All that stubble ash we were responsible for was like a great dose of fertilizer. ============================ Lessons you can learn: * Fire is real and can get out of control in seconds. Every second counts. If you have a rocket on the ground and there are unexploded ejection charges - get there FAST. * 1/2 motors deserve as much respect as any other motor in your arsenal * Always use a 12V car battery to light clusters. Never a handheld solar system. * Lookout for dry grass or other flammable items around the pads. Applies to all motors but extra considerations should be used for sparky motors. I know I’m a lot moe cautious now. Al McCue Calgary Canada 🇨🇦 CAR S571 / TRA 10540 L2

Jonathan Gaboury

I've had my fair share of mishaps. at AirFest 29, I shredded my 4" DX3 on a K535 and blew up a K1103. I also recently shredded a (Fiber glassed) 4-inch scratch build on a K480 (one of my new favorite motors)

Kurt Eherenman

My biggest mistakes usually happen during construction. Most recently, while building my 2 stage project, I drilled the holes in the sustainer along the fins to inject epoxy to adhere the fin root edge to the motor mount tube, I accidentally drilled into the motor mount tube, too. Epoxy dripped into to motor mount. Required a new sustainer kit to start over. I've also had ignitors fall out of the motor, burning brightly on the ground. I've also had a few chutes packed too tightly resulting in drogue only decents. Ugh.