I am Stephen Corban, 14 years of age, and have been seriously involved with rockets for about a year. (I flew 1 or 2 E2X rockets in Spring 2002).

My rocket is called The Entertainer (A Gift from the Tree Eating Rocket Gods). The entertainer consists of a body tube of an Estes Army rocket that was retrieved out of a tree after being there for half a year, The spare set of fins that comes with the Estes Heatseaker, and an E2X transition.

I originally wanted to create a new rocket out of this, one that ejected a parachute and floated back down. I determined this was impossible when I found how much the tube was swelled. So, I at first took the nosecone of my Estes Flash, and shoved it in there. The E2X nosecones fit, but they don't go in or some out without a fight.

A while later I got an Estes Heatseaker and built it. For some reason beyond my knowledge this kit comes with the fins for the rocket, and another simple trapezoidal set. So this rocket was sitting in the basement, and was crying for these fins.

When I had got the rocket back out of the tree, only one fin remained so I hacked that one off, and cut down the pit of plastic on one that had apparently cracked off. I then CAed the new fins to the tube, and they hold great. This is by far the strongest CA application I have ever had.

Then I went ahead and applied CA to the whole body tube because it was very weak after being rained on for 6 months. This did the trick, as the tube then became as solid as a rock. Then it sat.

One day I went over to my friend William's house, who is a fellow rocketeer. We were doing all kinds of stuff we decided to go test fly our birthday hat rocket. This was a windy day, with rain and thunder in the distant, and we had opted not to go to our local Tripoli launch. So we got a few other people and went over to a friends yard and shot them. Right before the launch I had to rip out the engine hook to keep from interfering with the launch rod. I shot the Entertainer with the flash nosecone for the first time for a successful lawndart. This was flown on a B6-4.

One problem with the flight, it kicked the motor. I do not like kicking motors, because I usually shoot in corn or bean fields with a bunch of nice dry flammable stuff laying around.

So that night I drilled a bunch of holes in the tube to let the exhaust from the ejection charge out.

I also packed some dog barf below the nosecone.

I flew this one more time, and it did a kind of horizontal slide recover, rotating at a super high speed on it's axis. This time, with no motor retention, the motor stayed. We were in business.

Well, the Flash nosecone went back to the Flash, and for the longest time the Entertainer sat without a nose. One day I had to order some parts for the Heatseaker (what a coincidence). When I got the nosecone for the Heatseaker it had the payload section coupler on it. I saw the part, put it on the rocket, took it out into the field behind our house, loaded it with an A8-3 and watched a 100% successful flight. This one had the horizontal spin recovery.

I call this the Entertainer because it will do a funky looking slide/rotation recovery without noseweight, and with nose weight it makes a spectacular lawndart. The best part is that it comes back with a bent body tube, or popped fin EVERY time!

I decided not to finish this bird. The old US ARMY body tube gives it a signature look that is recognized at every single launch of our local group.