It was the
Estes 1469 Tandem-X Launch Set. I bought it for my 6 year old nephew. I thought it would be fun for a Christmas Day project to build and launch a rocket. He opened it on Christmas morning and shouted "It's an Estes Rocket!!!!" so I was excited that I had bought a good gift. I had done research and read all the reviews, so I knew I needed to buy engines and recovery wadding. As soon as we were done with breakfast Charlie wanted to build the rocket. AWESOME!!!
It was awesome for about five minutes, until my brother realized that we needed
plastic cement glue. Well... that wasn't something I read on the reviews and my parents didn't have anything that would substitute. So, I went on a trip to the only place that was open on Christmas Day - CVS. Yup, I'm THAT person. They didn't have a super glue that I could use, so I had to go to the OTHER CVS in town (so I'm THAT person twice). I bought the two types of super glue, had a nice conversation with the guy about the rocket, and headed to Dunkin Donuts to buy everyone some coffee/cocoa/milk/diet coke treats on the way home (and I'm THAT person three times, though I did give a nice tip to the D&D people since they were working on Christmas).
Ok, so now we had the glue and, at this point, Charlie had lost interest in the building of the rocket and was more excited about the rocket launch.
Rich and I began building the Amazon rocket. We went step by step following the pictures. HINT: Make sure you READ the notes that go with the pictures... we ended up not lining up the little hinges and used super glue, so we had to cut the rocket SHORTER because of this. So we made the cut, shortened the rocket and re-glued in the correct position! Bonus!!!
We finished the rocket and were getting ready for the rocket launch. Rich took a run and met us at the school. Charlie and Dad walked to the school while Scott rode his bike, and the rest of us met them at the school with the rockets and the cars. We walked out to the field, prepared for our rocket launch, and after we placed the rocket where we wanted it, we realized that the bottom that you take off to put the engine in, somehow ended up glued onto the rocket, so we couldn't put the engine inside. So... rocket launch #1 was a fail.
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| The field where we were going to launch the rocket! |
We all piled in the cars and drove back to see if we could get it unstuck. Negative and I'm pretty sure Rich tried EVERYTHING to get it off... seems like that super glue from CVS was a win... So we did what we now knew how to do and we CUT the rocket AGAIN to force the engine in through the weakest link. At this point the rocket was about 2 inches shorter than originally, the stickers were no longer lined up, but we were able to get the engine in, and planned to do our rocket launch on Friday morning before we all left town.
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| Aunt Zilla, Charlie, and the rocket! |
Friday we all got up, got packed up (Rich, Charlie, Lea and I were all leaving that day) and then headed over to the "launch site". Ignore the fact that I merged two videos together... you can tell which one is mine and which is Lea's, but it gives you the full rocket effect!
Next year we have the other rocket to build, and hopefully we will definitely read all the instructions in full before using the glue! All in all, though, it was a FUN project for Christmas day, so thanks Estes for entertaining the family for a day!
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Oh and just another cute photo of my nephews in the Red Sox
shirts I got them!
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How was YOUR Christmas?
