Last year the Calgary Rocketry Association had a club launch with a "novelty' rocket theme. I'd kept a couple of MM Christmas ornaments my son received the previous Christmas, thinking that I should be able to something with them, and that was the perfect opportunity to build a rocket with one of them. For those that don't have a clue what I am talking about, I'll attempt to describe what these things look like. Actually, the photograph of the finished rocket pretty well shows what they look like, as the fins were the only things added to the ornament.

The ornament is a 7" long, 1.25" diameter, cardboard tube filled with MM's. The tube is decorated in a Christmas theme with the little MM characters from the TV commercials and topped with a 3" tall plastic figurine of one of the characters.

Conversion to a flying rocket was pretty straightforward. The figurine was kept as the nosecone and all that was done to it was the addition of an "eye hook" for the shockcord and recovery device attachment. The plastic cap at the bottom of the tube was removed, and a standard 18mm motor mount was installed, with centering rings and a motor hook. The 1/8" diameter launch lug required a stand-off made of 1/8" balsa in order for a launch rod to clear the various parts of the figurine nose cone. The shockcord mount was a typical "Estes-style" mount with approximately 2' of 1/8" elastic shock cord. A 12" Estes parachute was attached to the nosecone with a snap swivel and a short (6") section of shock cord.

The fins were a marvellous feat of design and simulation. In other words I drew out a couple of templates and picked the one that "looked" like it would work! In keeping with the Christmas theme of the main components of the rocket, I cut the fins with the look of a Christmas tree. I covered the fins with some scraps of wrapping paper. This was just a variation of the technique I use to cover all my balsa fins - I hate filling fins, so I've been covering them with paper for a long time. In this case, the wrapping paper was glued on with a glue stick, such as a Ross or UHU glue stick. The unfinished edges of the balsa were taken care of with a couple of passes with a green magic marker.

Flight Report

The rocket has flown a number of times, and makes its appearance at any launch I attend. Kids and adults get a kick out of it. It's been flown on A8-3's, B6-4's, and C6-5's. Fights are very stable. The oversize fins were a perfect match for the rather heavy nosecone.