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I was browsing through PopMech today and noticed an article on extreme hobbies: Multi-ton pumpkin-hurling trebuchets, kites so huge they're guided by woven 350 lb test Kevlar, constructing racing vehicles out of power tools, and launching 'model' rockets 7 miles short of the space-barrier.
I used to do the Estes rockets, and always wanted to go bigger, but I never had the funds to do so. My most extreme hobby now is home-made explosives, but I moved out of the gasoline-in-a-tennis-ball phase a long time ago, and the napalm and basic incendiaries, and I have once again hit the price wall. Without money for better safety equipment and supplies, I can go no further.
Does anyone here have an extreme hobby? How did you get involved?
Posts: 515 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I can watch television for up to a whole hour without getting up to do something else. Whew! Who knew I was so x-treme?
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Whoever makes a dobie of this thread entitled 'Extreme Hobbes' has to give me a million dollars.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Climbing.... I do out door and indoor rock climbing, but I also climb for work, which is in my opinion more fun than rock climbing.... I don't know why, but something about climbing steal gives me a rush that I can't duplicate. I mean I just love hanging from nothing but webbing wrapped around grid-work. I also love the fact that the only way down, is a free repel.... I love free repels.... The best one I've found is Assembly Hall, It is a 280 foot drop from the grid to the basket ball floor.
Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Have to agree w/ Stryker on this one. I used to do this, but not as a hobby. I worked in a warehouse and I used to climb all over the steel bins that went straight up. My boss just about had a heart attack every time .
But for extreme hobbies......I put a small day pack on my back w/ supplies and run a mountain trail. Fastest I've done yet is somewhere around 4 miles an hour. I slow down when it rains. An' this is for the 3 or 4 day treks, not the day ones.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I'm an extreme idiot. You wouldn't believe how hard that is. You have to be stupid all the time. NO REST! I started a year ago, and the hobby, its like a drug. I just can't stop being stupid. Can't you tell? Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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I used to launch model rockets too! I was in rocket club in high school. We built all our rockets from scratch and then put ridiculously huge motors in them. We launched a few with J-motors.
I’ve almost been seriously harmed from this hobby on two occasions.
On one of my teams first attempts at launching a two staged rocket with an ignition timer the guy who set the switches on the timer set them backwards. Instead of setting it to go off five seconds after launch the timer was set to go off thirty seconds after launch.
The purpose of the timer is to light the next motor in a multiple stage rocket. You set the timer for how ever many seconds you calculate it will take the first stage to burn. The timer starts its countdown as soon as it senses movement, i.e. the first stage lighting and pushing the rocket upwards. Once the countdown ends the timer ignites the next stage and another motor lights.
No one on the team realized the timer was set for thirty seconds. So we launched it and watched it go up. The second stage didn’t ignite like we thought it would. We figured it was design flaw. We knew we set the timer and it had to go off. The quickest explanation was that the wires leading into the second motor had been shaken out of place during launch.
So the rocket achieved apogee and began to descend. I start running out to where the rocket was going to land, which was a very stupid idea in retrospect because the second motor, which didn’t light yet, also ejects the parachute that brings the rocket calmly down the earth.
I was about thirty feet away from the rocket, which was still descending and about fifty feet off the ground, when the timer went off and ignited the second stage. The rocket was not descending perpendicular to the ground, so when the motor went off the rocket launched right towards me.
I ducked and rolled out of the way, and the rocket plowed a foot into the ground ten feet from where I was standing.
After that incident we always quadruple checked the timer settings and no one was allowed to go near where the rocket was projected to land until it had actually landed.
The next time I was almost maimed by a rocket happened at the Team America Rocketry Challenge national finals in Virginia.
I was standing around the launch pad with my three other team members watching the other teams launch their rockets.
The rules required that each team set up their rocket for launch, but the judges actually press the button to launch them. The teams set up in groups of ten in a semicircle. We were on the outside of the semicircle by a team that was using a rocket with multiple motors for the first stage.
These kinds of rockets are very tricky to ignite. All the motors must light at exactly the same time other wise the rocket will be thrown off balance and be launched at an angle instead of straight up.
When the multiple motor rocket was launched two of the motors did not light. To make matters worse, the bottom stage also detaches from the rest of the rocket as soon as it got off the guide rail.
This sent the bottom stage of the rocket, which contained the still burning motors, tumbling horizontally through the air.
And it decided to come right towards me.
One of my other team members, named Nick, sees the thing coming right towards my head. He runs (I remember everything from here on happening in slow motion), jumps, and tackles me to the ground before the rocket flies right past our heads.
From the time the rocket was launched to time I was on the ground was probably only ten seconds in length but it seemed to take whole minutes to me.
To my knowledge no one has ever been killed by a model rocket. I think it’s a fairly safe hobby. Just watch your head.
Posts: 43 | Registered: Mar 2005
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That reminds me of the way, every time we go out to light fireworks for the 4th of July (also my brother-in-law's birthday, and he loves fireworks, so that's what we do every year) for some reason one or more of the fireworks chase my husband...
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Okay, I have to confess. I was fibbing. I can't really watch television for an hour without getting up to do something else. I just wanted to look cool in front of everyone. Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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