I was pressured into model rockets by my buddies in a 4x4 group. Once a year we would camp out on New Years eve and shoot rockets, BS and get drunk around a campfire, in that order. The first year (2003) I just watched and got ragged on for not having a rocket, same thing happened in 2004, but it was fun to watch the different rockets and they were talking about how next year they would have an altitude contest.... A couple of weeks before the 2005 NYE party, one of the chief instgators in this "rocket thing" called me and made me promise to bring a rocket to that years party. So I did some research online and found a local hobby shop that carried rockets, went there and found an easy rocket to build (level 2) that went the highest (1800 ft.) It was an Estes "Mongoose". Spent a couple of hours building it and took it out to the party. No warm-up, just loaded it with C-6-0/C-6-7 and launched it. Really don't know how high it went, nobody had any way to keep track of it, so there really wasn't a "contest" per se. My in my mind, my Mongoose won hands down. And sitting around the campfire that night, the longer we drank, the higher my rocket went.....
Next year (2006) I did a little more research and found Apogee Components website, bought a beginner rocket called the "Blue streak" and a bigger rocket called the "Aspire". These were models you actually had to build, and I started learning more and more about model rockets through the Apogee website, now I own six rockets and just attended my first club launch with the Superstition Space Society. This hobby is definately addictive, my wife Sharon has put me on a $100 a month rocket budget, if it weren't for that, I'm sure I would need a semi-truck to get my stuff to the next club launch.
