Are You a Rocketeer?


YOU MIGHT BE A ROCKETEER IF......

You know all the motors and their thrust curves.

You can identify motors by their launch sound.

Your Win 95 desktop background is a rocket.

You use the kitchen mixer to make propellant.

Your answering machine has a recording of a countdown.

You know how high every rocket you own will go on any motor.

You can eyeball the CP of a rocket and know how much nose weight to add.

You can calculate center of pressure on a hand calculator.

You tell your wife you are buying rockets for an investment.

You know the life stories of John Cato, Jerry Irvine, Bob Kaplow, Frank Kosdon, Dave Gawlick, Ron Schultz & G. Harry Stine, and can recite them on demand.

You can recite the Cato Chronicals from memory without laughing.

You own a shopsmith and have never made any furniture.

You buy an M casing and tell your wife it is a lamp stand.

You took out a second mortgage for that M motor.

You ever had to move because the neighbors were nervous.

You buy a cordless drill and use the battery in your launch system.

You have ever tried to fly an Estes kit on an H motor.

You always upscale Estes rockets to absurd sizes.

You dream about being on the cover of HPR.

You look at sonotube concrete forms and think rockets.

You ever considered doing a 1:1 scale atlas.

You buy a video cam to remember those great rocket launches with no intentions of taping family reunions.

You ask the wife to sit in the back seat cause you want to put your rocket in the front seatbelt.

It starts raining at the launch and you first put the rockets in the car and then the kids.

You sleep outside at a launch and put your rockets in the tent.

Your bumper sticker reads "High Power Rockets".

Your personalized license tag reads "ROCKETS".

Ross, Ron, and Frank know you personally.

You know the UPS drivers' first name.

The UPS driver does not have to look at the address to know where the big box of tubes is to be delivered.

You put your Tripoli number on your business card.

You put your Tripoli card in front of your driver's license in your wallet.

The first thing you do when entering a new town is check the phone book for hobby shops.

You go to the library to check out the latest Missiles of the World magazine.

You have ever tried to get classified missile documents from the government so you could build a scale model.

You buy a van or truck to have a rocket transport vehicle.

You rummage through the neighbor's or your business's trash looking for cardboard tubes.

You call in sick so you could go to a launch on Friday.

You've ever told the boss you were sick so you could stay home and finish a rocket.

You look at farmland and consider its use as a launch site.

You buy a perfectly good Rat Shack pager system and convert it to an ejection charge system.

You want your rockets to be buried with you.

You go on a vacation back east and just happen to stop by a certain small town in Ohio on the way.

You plan your vacation around LDRS.

You spent $2500 for a computer so you could look at other people's rocketry web pages.

Your wife's curio cabinet is filled with rockets.

You have the only house in the neighborhood with an explosives bunker.

You specify to the real estate agent that you want a rocket building basement with a house on top of it for your new residence.

You cannot get your car in the garage because your rockets are in there.

You have to build a storage building just to put your rocket stuff in.

All your T-shirts are from launches.

You have rockets sitting on top of your TV in the living room.

You check the mail every day until that next issue of HPR shows up and get grumpy when it doesn't.

You save burnt out single use motor casings "because..."

You peruse all your catalogs and the surplus stores looking for rocket parts.

You smell the inside of your rocket after you recover it.

You skip buying lunch for 6 months to save for that BIG cert motor.

You feel superior to R/C plane people.

Your only friends also fly rockets.

Your wife asks "Don't you think of anything else but rockets?"

You spend more time with your rocketry hobby than you do with your wife.

You have ever spent 4 days in the Nevada desert in summer and then told your wife it was too hot to mow the grass.

You got married at a launch!

The only reason you go with the wife to the cloth store is to check out parachute material.

You use the sewing machine more than your wife does.

You invite your friends and neighbors over to show them rocket videos!

Your kids wonder what it would be like to have a normal dad.

You get your kids rocket kits for Xmas cause you know they don't want them and will give them back.

You have more invested in power tools than you have saved for your kid's college fund.

You have pictures of your rockets instead of your kids in your wallet .

You look at your kid's bike and think "K550..."

You put up an EZI65 on a J350 just so you can watch it rain cardboard confetti!

You did not know that AP was also a grocery chain.

You know the way to 12 launch sites but need a map to find your mother-in-law's house.

You epoxy your rockets together on the kitchen table.

You string Thermalite on your Xmas tree and use your altimeter to light up the lights.

*****By Jim Ball and John Bolene*****


Copyright © 1997
"You might be a Rocketeer If..." was created by Jim Ball & John Bolene one quiet night in ICQ chat.
this page created December 08, 1997