Papa's Rocket CampFlight Simulator

Model rocketry for the back field

Fly it a hundred times.
Before you glue one fin.

Pick your rocket, load a real engine, pull today's wind for your own town — then watch the whole flight, from the click of the button to the walk out to get it. Free, and there is nothing to install.

🚀 Open the simulator Works on a tablet. No account, ever.

Everything a good launch needs — all of it before you carry anything out to the field.

Rockets are awesome. Losing one is not.

Every rocketeer knows the walk back across the field with nothing in your hands. Here is the swap.

Watch it go up. Then go find it.

Two views of the same flight — one from the side of the field, one from straight above it.

What you get when you open it

The whole camp, in one screen: pick a rocket, load an engine, read the weather, aim the rod, and fly it until you have it right.

One box. Everything launch day needs.

Papa’s Rocket Camp is a website, but it is also a real box that rides out to the field. Here is exactly what is in it, and why.

Launch day is short and the drive home is long. Nothing ends an afternoon faster than a fin that will not stay on, a chute with no wadding behind it, or an igniter that was the last igniter. So the box is packed once and packed properly: the glue and the sanding block for the build, the wadding and the spare chutes for the flights, and the spares for the two things that always run out first — igniters and patience.

The grown-up half of the box

Four of these are not toys, and they live behind the lock.

• The hobby knife is an adult tool, every time. No exceptions, no “just this once” — it is the sharpest thing in the box by a mile.
• Super glue and its accelerator are handled by the grown-up. Cyanoacrylate bonds skin faster than balsa, and the accelerator flashes it off hot. Gloves on, glasses on, and work where the air moves.
• Safety glasses go on before the glue comes out, and stay on at the pad. There is a pair sized for an adult and a pair sized for a child, because glasses that slide down a small nose are glasses nobody keeps on.
• The toolbox lock is the whole point of the toolbox. Knife, glue and accelerator go back in and the box gets locked, so the sharp and the sticky are never the things a small hand finds first.

The two sensors are safety gear as much as they are gadgets. The wind speed sensor settles the argument about whether it is too breezy — the NAR code says do not fly above 20 mph, and a number beats a guess. The metallic angle sensor does the same for the launch rod, which the code keeps within 30° of vertical. Both of those limits are built into the simulator too, so you can see what they cost you before you are standing in the field.

What is in the box

Twenty-eight labels on the photo, thirty-one lines on the list — the engines and the rockets each earn two, and one thing never made it into the picture.

The list, down to the label

Exactly what is in this box, so you can pack the same one. The # column is the number on the photo above. Runs out marks the sixteen things that get used up rather than put back — those are the ones worth checking before a launch day rather than during one.

Nothing up our sleeve. Here is every number.

A simulator is only worth as much as the numbers inside it. So here they all are — every engine, every kit, every fin, and the measured thrust curves behind them. These tables are not typed out: they are read straight off the flight model as the page loads, so what you see here is exactly what your rocket flew on.

Engines

The left half is what the model flies. The right half is what the engine actually did on a test stand. Peak (flown) is the number that matters and the one to watch: the model stretches a curve shape to hit the published total impulse exactly, so the peak it reaches is a consequence of that shape rather than the figure printed on the packet.

Thrust curves

One card per engine family — a C6-3 and a C6-7 burn the same propellant and differ only in the delay grain behind it, which does its work after thrust is over. The solid line is the certification file from ThrustCurve.org. The dashed line is the curve the simulator actually integrates.

Rockets — airframe and mass

Metric is what the model works in; the inches and ounces beside them are the same numbers in the units the kit is sold in.

Rockets — nose, fins and stability

Everything the Barrowman calculation needs, and what it returns. Margin is how far the centre of pressure sits behind the balance point, counted in body diameters — one caliber or more is the old rule of thumb for a rocket that flies straight. Every distance here is measured from the tip of the nose. The margin is quoted empty, so it is the flattering figure: an engine loaded in the tail drags the balance point back toward the fins and takes margin away. An Alpha III reads 3.43 calibers on this table and 1.46 with a C6-5 aboard, which is the number that actually flies.

The wider black-powder database

The 31 kits above are the ones the simulator can fly, because they are the ones somebody has measured a fin planform and a balance point for. They are not the only black-powder rockets that exist. This is every kit the three archives below between them name —   of them — with whatever each source actually publishes and nothing filled in by guesswork. Rows marked flies are in the fleet; the rest are here as a reference, and as a shortlist of what could join it.

Components

OpenRocket's own parts database, which is where the nose cone shapes come from: every catalogued Estes and Quest nose cone, body tube, coupler, transition, lug and canopy, by manufacturer part number. This is the component data a kit is built out of — the missing half is which parts go in which kit, and in what arrangement, which no machine-readable source publishes.

The model itself

The constants and methods behind the two simulators. Both read the same flight-model.js, so neither can drift from the other.

The simulator is practice. The field has rules.

Flying a real rocket is the fun part, and it stays fun by doing the same few things every single time.

• A grown-up runs the pad and the launch controller. Always — no exceptions, no matter how many flights you've done.
• Follow the NAR Model Rocket Safety Code. The simulator flags it when your setup breaks one of the rules.
• Do not launch above 20 mph wind. You will not get the rocket back, and you may not get it back safely.
• Keep the launch rod within 30° of vertical, tipped into the wind. Angling into the wind is what brings it down near the pad instead of three fields over.
• Big open field, no dry grass, everyone behind the line at the countdown. Look up before you launch, and never walk back to a rocket that didn't fire until the grown-up says so.

The eleven rules. All of them, and why.

This is the Model Rocket Safety Code of the National Association of Rocketry — eleven rules that have kept this hobby about as safe as a hobby gets. Each one below is stated plainly, with the reason it is on the list. Read them together before the first launch day, and the rest of the day takes care of itself.

1. 1

   Materials

   Only lightweight, non-metal parts for the nose, body and fins.

   WHY: Everything that goes up comes down, and not always under the parachute. Cardboard, balsa and plastic crumple, snap and land soft. A metal fin is a blade and a metal nose cone is a hammer — and metal is exactly what you do not want on the end of a rocket that finds a power line.

2. 2

   Motors

   Only certified, commercially made motors, used the way the maker says. Never tamper with one.

   WHY: A certified motor has been fired on a test stand until its thrust curve is known to the tenth of a newton — those published curves are the ones this simulator flies. Anything home-mixed or opened up has no curve and no record, and a motor that fails sideways is a motor that fails through the side of the tube.

3. 3

   Ignition System

   An electrical launch system and electrical igniters. The igniter goes in only once the rocket is at the pad. A safety interlock sits in series with the launch switch, and the switch springs back to off the moment you let go.

   WHY: Electrical ignition is what lets everyone stand well back instead of leaning over a lit fuse. The interlock is the key somebody holds in their hand, so the pad cannot fire while a person is next to it. The spring-back switch means a dropped controller stops firing rather than keeps firing.

4. 4

   Misfires

   If it does not go, take out the interlock or disconnect the battery — then wait a full 60 seconds before anybody walks up to it.

   WHY: This is the rule that stops the injury that happens most in this hobby: somebody walks to a rocket that has not launched, and it launches. Sixty seconds is longer than any igniter can sit and smoulder. Count it out loud so everybody hears the same clock.

5. 5

   Launch Safety

   Count down out loud, make sure everyone is watching, and keep everyone at least 15 ft back for D motors and smaller, or 30 ft for anything bigger. Launching more than ten at once means standing back 1.5× the highest altitude expected.

   WHY: The countdown is not theatre. It is how you find out whether every person on that field is looking at the pad, before there is anything to look at. The distance is for the rare flight that leaves the rod sideways, which is exactly the flight nobody sees coming.

6. 6

   Launcher

   A rod, rail or tower pointed within 30° of vertical, with a blast deflector under it. Keep the top of the rod above eye level, or cap it.

   WHY: Past 30° a rocket stops going up and starts going out — fast, and usually straight off the field. The deflector keeps the exhaust off the grass. The cap is for eyes: a bare launch rod sits at precisely the wrong height for a child walking towards the pad. The pad in the simulator stops at 30° for this reason.

7. 7

   Size

   Not more than 1,500 g (53 oz) on the pad, not more than 125 g (4.4 oz) of propellant, and not more than 320 N·s of total impulse.

   WHY: This is not a guideline, it is the definition. Cross any of those three numbers and you are no longer flying a model rocket — you are in high-power rocketry, which needs certification, an FAA waiver and a far bigger field. Everything else in this code assumes you are under those limits.

8. 8

   Flight Safety

   Never at a target, into a cloud, near aircraft, over anybody’s head, or outside the boundary of the site. Nothing flammable or explosive on board.

   WHY: Into a cloud means you cannot see where it went — and neither can the pilot who is already in there. Over heads means that the one flight whose parachute does not open comes down on a person instead of on grass.

9. 9

   Launch Site

   Outdoors, in open ground at least as big as the table below, in wind no stronger than 20 mph, with no dry grass near the pad.

   WHY: The field size is set by the engine: a C wants 400 ft of clear ground in every direction, a D wants 500. Above 20 mph of wind, recovery stops being a walk and becomes a search. The “walk” number in the simulator is an estimate of exactly this — how much of that field you are going to need.

10. 10

    Recovery System

    A streamer or a parachute, so the rocket comes back safe and undamaged and can fly again — and flame-resistant or fireproof wadding.

    WHY: A rocket without working recovery comes back as a lawn dart at the speed it went up. The wadding is the part people skip: it is what stops the ejection charge setting the parachute alight, and ordinary tissue can come out still glowing and land in dry grass.

11. 11

    Recovery Safety

    Never go after a rocket that is in power lines, in a tall tree, or anywhere else dangerous.

    WHY: This is the one rule where the right answer is to walk away and leave it. A rocket costs a few dollars and an afternoon; nothing on that list is worth what getting it back can cost. Tell a grown-up where it is, and go build another one.

How much field rule 9 actually wants

Rule 9 points at a table, and this is it: the bigger the engine, the more open ground you need in every direction from the pad. Measure it once for your field and you will know which engines it can take.

Want a kit that isn't in here yet?

Tell us which one and we will look at adding it. Same goes for a feature you wish the simulator had. Every request is read by a person before it shows up on this page.

Free to use. Always will be.

No ads, no accounts, nothing to sign up for, and nothing sold to anybody. Your flights stay in your own browser. None of that is going to change, and a donation does not buy anything extra — there is no extra to buy.

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