this reminds me of one of my antics.......
Oh HELL YA!
One friend built the rocket and we tried to launch it off of another friend's deck and out over the bay.......I say "tried" 'cause the damn thing stuck to the home-made launcher and just jetted first, second and third stages into the deck.
This reminds me of a stunt we tried to pull in high school.
I built a home-made 3 stage rocket (using the Estes' engines)
We had marked off the distance from the town square down the boulevard to the high school and had calculated the distance so that the second and third stages would kick in at the Dairy Queen and the high school as the rocket went down the boulevard.
My friend built a "ramp" to launch the rocket (reminiscent of the Evel Keneival Snake River Canyon ramp, but only at a small scale) so that it would go from the edge of the town square toward the high school. The whole launch path was downhill, about a half mile straight stretch of wide 5 lane highway. The highway flattened out at some point, and we figured that the rocket would hit the ground at a decent trajectory angle so that it would "skip" and continue on its path to go past the school building about the time the last stage would kick in and the report would be seen and heard - just about the time the basketball game was over.
So.......
We all went to the basketball game, and left early so we could set up our contraption. We parked our cars a few block away and proceeded to the launch point. There were 4 of us - we had the ramp in two pieces that we could throw up quickly, and two of us were carrying the rocket and the batteries to launch it.
We waited on our fifth cohort who came by in his car with a bright spotlight (for fox hunting) and he hit the photosensors on the lights on the town on the square so it was dark for a minute or so.
We got the ramp in place and the launch was successful - but the rear fins on the rocket must have been slightly misaligned, because the rocket began a large spiral as it traveled down the boulevard, not really bad, but as it came around to begin the second "loop", it got closer to the road than it should have before the second stage kicked in and the thing stuck right in the grill of a '63 Rambler Classic headed up the hill by the Dairy Queen.
About that same time, the second stage and the next engine kicked in, and the man driving the Rambler thought his car was on fire and panicked, jumped out of the car and took cover in the ditch, leaving his car to roll slowly down the highway. Then the third stage kicked in and there was absolute chaos on the road. Luckily the abandoned car ran into the ditch when our makeshift charge went off, and somehow no one was hurt.
We rode by the scene two or three times to see what the police and fire department were doing, scared to death, but glad that no one got hurt. The police chief knew we probably had something to do with the whole thing - and he accosted us - but that is another story.
I will never forget this whole thing - it was one of our signature pranks in high school.
I love it...
in all actuality... its about the other way around...I"m about a full head taller than erika
