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While at home I did a small bit of hs rocketry. My reasons where threefold: first I must own to an addiction to writing rocket launch reports, further, I wanted to bring coke-bottle Rocketry to Those Who Have None and finally I wondered weither a hs rocket was by necessity a one bottle rocket. Could a well caulked araldite seam withstand the venerial (venereal ?) extremes of pressure and temperature a two bottle hs explosion would involve? How long is a hs rocket?
Joyce said that Ireland is the sow that ate her own farrow. While I would claim to be the little piggy that ate roast beef, my old friend KC will certainly resent being called the little piggy that cried wee wee wee all the way home. KC had previously expressed his interest in coke-bottle rocketry and so it was with him I made 2 hs rockets. One, named Hog by my sister, Catherine, was a standard one bottle hs design, the other, named, again by Catherine, Sprog, was a two bottle version. In Ireland, so recantely free from the Imperial yoke, coke is bought in one-and-a-half litre bottle and so Sprog was made by aralditing two one-and-a-half litre bottles together and girthing the seam with an araldite smeared flange.
Between fabrication and launch I spoke to Jenny on the telephone. She had independently decided to bring Rocketry to the Republic. Her mission was centred on the tiny village of Milltown in County Kerry. My heart throbbed for this strange love of mine. Love, love of coke bottle rocketry. I like to imagine it speading from many centres, spreading radially from different centres like BSE plaques spreading in the brain, soon whole populations mad for Rocketry.
The day of the launch was very windy, very fresh. KC, my father, sister, brother Kieran and myself travelled down to Renville to launch Hog and Sprog by the sea. The wind was fierce. We rigged a hoe as a launch tube, put Hog on the launch tube, sprayed in hs, stood back, clicked the sparker and nothing happened. Failure. To fail again, fail better, we put Sprog on the tube, prepared it and clicked the sparker. Whoosh, it shoot into the air, my father described himself as being fooled into thinking it had disappeared rather than taken off, it had shot upwards at an incredible speed. It straight-as-a-died upwards some 20 metres; only at 20 metres did the wind catch it and blow it sideways as it fell back to the ground it had so rudely spurned. It is as high as I've seen a rocket fly. All across the bay windsurfers, interrupted mid- manouver by the spectactular, had tripped, fallen from their boards and were bobbing about in the sea.
After this it was eastwards, worsewards Ho! and I'm back on the edge of the Fens. Before I left KC was muttering about Peroxide admixture and oxygen partial pressure, soon we may have the pleasure of our first Rocket report from the Galway group.
However, I feel compelled to register my very grave concern over the insidious entry of political commentry onto the rocket HP.
Any further abuses and the perpetrators should be hair-spray lauched back to their republic forthwith (without trial) - the devil take the EC and its popycock courts, say I !!!
I remain, yours faithfully,
S Lister , Rocketeer
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