Quote
Originally posted by: Windexed
Quote
Originally posted by: greencapt
Awesome ric!!! You and I are peas in a pod!!! Myself and my highschools chums used to make the same kind of bombs, but we used muriatic acid (the joys of pool chemicals, right?). We took the empty 2 liter bottle, put 3 or 4 crumpled pieces of aluminum foil into the bottle and poured in the acid to cover... close the lid tightly, shake the bottle and THROW IT AWAY FROM YOU!!! LOL. No fire or smoke, of course, but... BADABOOOOOMMMM!!!!

Then again, we also used to make home-brewed napalm out of Ivory liquid soap and gasoline... those were the days!

(what the hell were we thinking?!?!?!?!)

Oh and yes... to answer the thread- we also built and launced model rockets. Fun times, but running after them and trying to figure out where they landed (inevitably in some wooded area) was a pain in the rear.

We used to do these (although we substituted "Works" toilet cleaner for pool chemicals) until one went off in my buddy's basement.

Anyway, I spent a few summers (and probably hundreds of my parents' dollars) on Estes rockets. Although, like you guys, I rarely fired them off properly, instead modifiying them and experimenting and whatnot. I don't think I ever used the starter switch, instead I'd just touch the wires to a lantern battery. Fields were usually too windy, so I just set them off in the neighborhood. If they landed on someone's roof, I'd just go by a new $5 mosquito or Alpha and whatever. Once we tried fastening one onto a the back of a toy dumptruck to see if we could set a toy-truck land speed record, but it didn't work. Another time I had one of those multi-stage ones, with this long fuselage. I don't know if it was a defective engine (or maybe I glued the nose on hoping it would blow up) but the thing came straight down the way it came up. We didn't realize how fast it was approaching condsidering it probably hit a few thousand feet, but we barely got out of the way of it down at us in a free fall. It stuck 2 feet into the ground. I ripped it in half just tring to pull it out of the ground. God this is awesome. Keep the stories comin' guys!

Those switches NEVER worked right. Dude, I forgot about the Alphas. Estes had a really neat business going on rockets for quite a few years. Remember those balsa wood fins? Huuuhhhhh...terrible. I remember my favorites were models called the Patriot and also there was one that was silver and black with a skull and cross-bones on it. Also my brother had a funky dark-glittery green one that they called "The Kryptonite".

I remember after I "outgrew" them, my cousin had an accident with a model rocket. Not sure what he was doing, but he wound up with powder burns on his leg. My aunt and mother took him to the hospital in my new car, so I was like "Don't get any blood on the seats"....talk about Mr. Compassion, huh?