This appendix lists sources of materials and information you need to make rockets.
Here are some suppliers you’ll find useful.
http://www.aerotech-rocketry.com
Aerotech manufactures rocket motors and reloads. While concentrating on high-power motors, the company also has lines of single-use motors and low-power and mid-power reloadable motors.
Aerotech makes some of its own motors, but focuses more on the reloads for reloadable motors. Many of the motors people refer to as Aerotech reloadable motors are actually built by a partner company called Reloadable Motor Systems, or RMS for short.
Chapter 23 shows how to prepare and fly the RMS 24-40 motor using Aerotech reloads.
Altus Metrum makes a series of altimeters, including one small one called the MicroPeak that will fit in low-power model rockets. Free software and information about the altimeters is available on the website. The altimeters are offered through other retailers, such as Apogee Components.
Apogee Components sells both low-power and high-power rocketry supplies, kits, and motors. It’s a great resource for parts, supplies, and kits, and also has a fantastic collection of technical reports and how-to guides that it sends out with qualifying orders.
Apogee Components also markets RockSim, the most popular rocket simulator for model rocketry.
A small company owned by a couple of disabled vets, this is a really fun place to look for kits, especially oddrocs.
Balsa Machining Service has the widest selection of balsa nose cones and nose blocks of any source I am aware of. I personally like balsa nose cones better than plastic ones; they are softer on impact and easier to modify.
The payload rockets from Chapter 9-- particularly the ICU2 camera payload and the egg lofter payload—are examples of rockets that can easily be built with balsa parts, but are difficult to build from plastic.
Balsa Machining also has a good selection of other hard-to-find parts, like very long body tubes and tube couplers.
http://www.customrocketcompany.com
This small rocket company makes a number of fun kits. Its Skybird payload rocket is one example of the unusual twist the designers give to many rockets: rather than the conventional clear payload bay, this one sports a transparent red payload tube.
The 800-pound gorilla of the low-power model rocket world, Estes Industries has been around since the dawn of model rocketry.
The company makes and sells the Estes Designer’s Special, as well as various replacement parts, motors, and kits.
You can frequently find Estes parts, especially the Estes Designer’s Special, discounted through other retailers like Amazon.
Estes starter kits, rocket kits, and motors are also sold through independent hobby stores and at chain hobby stores like Hobby Lobby.
FlisKits is one of the smaller rocket companies. It specializes in low-power rocket kits and has some really fun ones, like the scale model of Nellie, the first liquid-propelled rocket, that was featured in Chapter 23.
Hobby Lobby is one of the more reliable suppliers of rocketry supplies you are likely to find in your local area. While specialized hobby stores are great, they aren’t easy to find in towns and smaller cities, and even in large ones they may be fairly far away.
Hobby Lobby has a nice selection of rocket motors, launchers, igniters, recovery wadding, and rocket kits, as well as balsa wood and other modeling supplies.
Best of all, it frequently offers 40% off coupons for a single item. I recently got an Estes starter kit for a relative for just $20. Do an online search for “hobby lobby 40 off” to find the coupons.
JonRocket has a pretty good selection of rocket parts and kits. In addition to body tubes and other supplies, it’s also a great source for balsa parts, including balsa nose cones and nose blocks.
Several of the rockets in the book, particularly the egg lofter and ICU2 camera payload, use nose cones or nose blocks from JonRocket.
This is the headquarters for the retail arm of Make:, publishers of this book.
It’s a great place to find all sorts of kits, including some of the air rocket kits from this book. Watch Maker Shed for other upcoming rocket kits, too.
Rocketarium has a good selection of low-power rocket kits, including a very fun section devoted to oddrocs.
One of the few competitors for Estes in the low-power model rocket arena, Quest has a nice online store featuring motors, parts, and kits. They are frequently less expensive than the Estes parts, and the quality is just as good. Estes has a better selection for most items, though.
Here are some websites for various clubs and other resources.
This is a great place to explore air rocketry: it’s sort of a combination store, forum, and blog site for air rocket enthusiasts, run by the folks who developed the air rocket launcher from Chapter 6 and the air rocket glider from Chapter 21.
http://bit.ly/byteworks-make-rockets
Full-size templates, decal patterns, and rocket simulation files for most of the rockets in this book are available from the author’s website. The author also created techBASIC, which includes copies of all of the BASIC programs from this book. You can find out more about techBASIC at http://www.byteworks.us/Byte_Works/techBASIC.html.
These folks make the software used to flash the Texas Instruments MSP430 LaunchPad used in the water rocket parachute deployment system. The software is a free download.
http://openrocket.sourceforge.net
OpenRocket is a free rocket simulator that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It started life as a thesis project. This website is the place to go for downloads and further information, or, if you are a programmer and inclined to help, to join the project team.
This site is dedicated to customer reviews of rocketry-related products. It’s a good place to browse to find out what is new and what other model rocket scientists think about various products.
This forum is a great place for doing research and getting your questions answered by experienced model rocket scientists. It’s the next best thing to a 24/7 model rocket club!
The rocket forum is a part of a larger site, Rocketry Online.
This site houses a collection of thrust curves for most commercially available motors. You can check plots of the thrust curves right on the site, allowing you to pick appropriate motors for a given liftoff weight. You can also download the motor data in common formats suitable for most rocket simulators. These formats use ASCII files to store the data, so you can open the files in any text editor to look at the raw data yourself.
This site caters to the water rocket crowd, with great tutorials on various aspects of water rocketry, a list of world records, and occasionally links to places to buy water rocket–related specialty items. This site and the people behind it were huge resources for writing Chapter 11 and Chapter 12. The water rocket launcher and parachute recovery system derive directly from designs on the site.
You’ll need to know where to get specialty electronics parts; here are some sources.
One of just a few online stores that sells a wide selection of electronics parts and will still sell a single part, Digi-Key is a great place to look for electronic components like those used in the launchers and the water rocket parachute system.
Jameco caters to hobbyists and professionals building prototypes. It has a good selection of both parts and tools.
Mouser is a great source for electronics parts. The biggest problem is that there are so many! The site has built a great filter-based search engine, though, so you can narrow down the parts pretty fast. Mouser is unusual in that it will sell individual parts with no minimum order, but also sells in bulk.
This online store has some very hard-to-find parts, such as the 9-pin connectors used for the quad launch controller in Chapter 4.
Radio Shack is a great place to find components for electronics projects like the launch controllers in Chapter 4.
While it tends to be a little more expensive than some other shops, Radio Shack makes up for that with brick-and-mortar stores in most cities, so you can stop by and grab a part without waiting for shipping. And, after all, shipping adds enough to the price of mail order parts that the overall cost is often comparable.
SparkFun is an electronics supply house that caters to hobbyist builders.
It has a good selection of common parts as well as a nice selection of microcontrollers, sensors, and construction materials.
A nice feature about the site is that many parts and tools have how-to blogs and videos. There is also a part-based forum where you can ask for help or see what others have tried.
These companies can supply you with various tools and other items you’ll need for the projects in this book.
Ace Hardware has both an online presence and brick-and-mortar stores in many cities. It’s a favorite haunt of mine because of the great selection of nuts, bolts, and other small hardware items, all available in loose bins so you can buy exactly the number of parts you need.
You can get all sorts of tools and supplies from Amazon. It’s worth searching the site for pretty much anything, from an Estes Designer’s Special to a hobby knife.
This online store specializes in bolts and other fasteners. Try it if you can’t find a bolt locally.
Home Depot is a big-box hardware store that probably has an outlet near you, and also has an online store. It’s a good source for general hardware parts like PVC, brass, paint, and other supplies.
http://lascofittings.sitewrench.com
Basically a plumbing supply house, Lasco is a great source for hard-to-find parts for water rocket and air rocket launchers.
Lowe’s is a big-box hardware store that has both an online store and brick-and-mortar stores. It’s a good source for PVC, brass, paint, and other supplies used for launchers and water rockets.
This is a great place to pick up all sorts of supplies for model rocketry, from cutting boards to elastic for shock cords to nylon for heavy-duty parachutes. Jo-Ann’s regularly has coupons for 40% off. Check online by searching for “joann coupon” when you plan a trip.
Many cities have well-stocked local hobby stores that carry balsa wood and hardwoods for modeling. If you’re not that lucky, or if you are looking for something a little unusual, try National Balsa. And remember, this supplier isn’t just for balsa wood; they also carry other woods suitable for building model rockets and airplanes and even have a few model airplane kits.
Some metal parts, like brass tubes, may be difficult to find locally. This online store has a great selection of brass tubes and other metal parts, and they can be ordered in small quantities.
SIG makes dope, a kind of paint used for model airplanes, and is a good source for sanding sealer, which is a great wood sealer for porous materials like balsa wood.
SIG also has a great selection of parts and supplies for building model airplanes. This is a great place to shop if you are trying to build a really fancy rocket plane.