Very hectic day today, building a rocket, shipping parcels and trying to get some HSE legal paperwork too. Got a busy few days ahead.

Keep on eye on our website, estes motors at stunning pre order prices, 28 day delivery going up today !!!

A motors £7.45
B motors £7.95
C motors £8.95
D motors £12.95

Spent the day doing software upgrades and maintenance on our computer systems. A boring but very essential task.

Added the Estes B6-0 and A10-0T to our UK Motor List. This is pretty much it now, we have all the Estes, Quest, Cesaroni and Aerotech motors listed we think. Let us know if you have one and think it's legal and we will investigate. We have checked out the Rocket Services motors and cant find any classification so these have been left off the list. So except for Congreve we think the list is pretty comprehensive now.

Sorry to our customers we are experiencing a delay in getting resupplied with Estes motors. Hopefully they should arrive early next week.

Finally all except for orders placed in the last few days, we are up to date with our orders. Few left waiting for stock, but final stock should be in next week to sort those. Many thanks to all our customers for their patience.

Added Quest motors to the UK Legal Motor List. Although I don't think anyone is importing them, many rocketeers still have them in their motor boxes or a rare few left on model shop shelves.

That's it for today, far too hot !

Thanks to the help of a friend we despatched a record number of orders today, 43 out of the unit today.

Over the past few months, I have unfortunately not been able to offer the service we wanted to due to illness and other pressures in life. This has resulted in poor service. This is never something we would wish for but it has been unavoidable. With illness now almost passed we look forward to getting back on track and a fantastic 2010.

Over the next few months we will be working hard with the schools. We cant say too much at the moment, but things are happening behind the scenes and an announcement will be made the first of many this year on serious developments. Education and helping schools will be a major focus point for us this year.

We are making an announcement to our customers of possible delays. Both couriers and Royal Mail have all now admitted to massive backlogs in their networks due to the very bad weather. In some cases it does seem that items posted in time prior to the last posting dates will in fact not reach customers in time for Christmas Day. On behalf of Royal Mail and the couriers we are very sorry.

Even now after the strikes have finished, Royal Mail have such a huge backlog, it is taking weeks in some cases to get parcels to customers. If you have ordered recently and haven't received your parcel via Royal Mail, please be patient. In most cases it will turn up eventually.

Another frustrating day trying to get in touch with UKAYROC teams to help them with motors and RCA issues, not much joy. Looks like another year of Estes.

Been very busy lately working on the new forums, we are using a free version of an off the shelf forum product for ASP.net and SQLServer (for those techies amongst us), I know I just couldn't bring myself to use a non SQLServer database product, I just love it.

Hopefully our customers will use them to discuss rocketry with us and yourselves. These forums are not a substitute for the UKRA forums, but an extra. There are thousands of people flying rockets who are unfortunately for one reason or another not UKRA members. So we hope we have created a place for them to chat.

One of the primary goals of the forums is to help us keep in touch with schools and the UKAYROC teams, these teachers are busy people and anything we can do to keep them in touch and up to date with what's going on in the rocketry world has to be good !

Leaving miserable wet Kent early Sunday morning I feared the worst for the meeting, but to my surprise, the weather was unbelievable, complete blue sky, just the odd cloud. You could literally see the passenger airliners coming it at 10K to Birmingham airport.

Quite a few people for Black Knights, and a few new faces, even Colin Rowe appeared! It was also nice to see a few kids having great fun there with their rockets. A few pictures are uploaded to our Facebook page and also our Flickr account.

Well another week flies bye. Fairly quiet still this week, everyone still recovering from time off and holidays I suspect. Added Septembers meeting for Black Knights onto the RS Facebook page and Rocket Corner.

A great day at EARS, the rain held off, although it was a bit windy. Lots of model flights and some high power flights, good to see and chat with everyone. the next outing for the Mobile Store is Black Knights on the 20th Sep.

Well we are back from IRW and now wading through all those things that need sorting when you get back. IRW although wet was an enjoyable event as always. I guess the weather doesn't count for everything, rockets and people are most of it. Most days had a launch window of some kind which allowed some rockets including a few larger K rockets to launch.

We did a caption contest for a picture of Tome Roberts, media whore he is whilst we were up there and will post all the entries on the UKRA site, later in the week.

Anyway back to work.

I hope everyone is busy preparing for IRW, I know we are. Lots to do and always seems so little time left. Camping stuff all dug out and checked, hair cut done, van booked in for service and almost ready to go.

Apologies for any delays in shipping over the last couple of days, looks like I have fallen foul of the Swineflu. Hopefully we will be back to normal Monday.

Apologies for the lack of blog items recently, it has been very busy with school orders. We have another shipment coming in Monday, more Aeropack, Semroc, Fliskits, PML and at last our first shipment of Blue Tube will be in.

We are also going to IRW now and will be trading there. We will bring most of our normal shop, but it wont be as large as normal so we can include a couple of rockets to fly at IRW.

Another shipment has arrived from the US, including items from Top Flight, Aeropack, Semroc, Estes and LOC. Few new Semroc kits in there, but most of it is just stock top ups.

Remember to follow us on Facebook, become a fan.

Over the last month or so, both Aerotech and Cesaroni have been busy adding motors to their product lines.

Cesaroni have a large range of their new Pro29 motors now certified and listed on their website. Also their have some new Pro38-6XL hardware with some new reloads, featuring the new Blue Streak and IMax propellants. Cesaroni have also at long last introduced some new Pro75 reloads.

Aerotech have also released some stunning end burning Warp 9 reloads with 8 second burn time, see the article on Rocketry Planet.

The question of when they will hit the UK market is probably the one everyone is asking. I would suspect that although some of them may get CE marking this year, the HSE classification is unlikely and therefore we will probably have to wait until next year to try these new motors.

Well its been another busy day. Today we announced we are now tweeting on Twitter. Social networking is an up and coming form of communication so we thought we would let people know what we are up to. Our twitter site is http://twitter.com/rocketstore.

We will also be added much more information via this blog and also our new Google BlogSpot at http://rocketstoreuk.blogspot.com.

Over the new few weeks we will be publishing a series of new articles via the blogs and the information section on our website, so please keep an eye on our site, blogs and twitter.

Also we have posted a News article regarding our new proposed Rocket Store Flyers Club. We hope to bring lots of discounts, benefits and services to our customers and club members. If you have any feedback, let us know.

Black Knights was wet and windy, but it was nice to see a few friendly faces. University of Warwick also turned up to do some payload experiments in a bunch of Semroc SLS Hustler rockets. the D12-3 motors were only just capable in the wind.

The shop is closed tomorrow all day Friday 15th May. We will be open again Saturday 16th May as usual.

Big EARS was fantastic, great weather on the Sunday, not many of those a year. We are now back unloading, stock taking and doing the paperwork. Please bear with us today whilst we get sorted.

Unfortunately we have had to increase our shipping costs for Royal Mail in order to take into account the recent Royal Mail price increases. We have kept them as low as possible whilst covering the costs of shipping and packaging.

It's been great to have a couple of days off to recharge the old batteries over Easter. We haven't been completely idle, we have been putting together some supplier orders from Aeropack, Fliskits, LOC, Madcow and others ready for Big EARS.

We have changed our opening times and now close at 5pm instead of 5:30pm on weekdays.

We are still adding Semroc kits to the site. Most of them are now on the site, many are in stock, with the majority of the ones not in stock now on the way to us.

Many thanks to our customers for being patient with their orders whilst we moved and got everything ship shape. We have almost all orders either packed ready to ship or shipped now.

We have got a few of the new LOC Minis in. These are 1" airframe versions of some of their famous larger high powered kits.

Apologies for a period of downtime whilst we upgraded a few bits today.

It was great to see so many people at EARS yesterday for their first meeting of the season. Although we ended up turning up late we got up and running pretty quick. A good mixture of flyers, model, UKAYROC and some high power stuff.
Great weather and at times no wind too, couldn't really ask for more!
A couple of people took their Level 1 cert flights too. Congratulations to Carlton if reading this.

Can all customers who require motors, please bring their relevant documentation with them for any motor purchases to all events. We will require to see an RCA for all AP motor purchases and an explosives license for anything above 1Kg.

We have been very busy lately adding most of the Semroc range of rockets to the online store. There is over 90 rockets so it will take another few days of entering all that data to get everything there, but hopefully it will be finished shortly.

Apologies, the site has been down for a few hours whilst we have been performing some maintenance.

Finally we have some PerfectFlite in stock, just a few those so scoop em up quick.

Still not feeling great so early day and do some work from home.

Altered the Rocket Store and Rocket Corner websites to include an accent colour at the top which matches the one at the bottom in the footer. Several customers have mentioned that with content now spread over 2 sites, sometimes with a very similar design it is difficult to remember where you are. So red for retail and green for general UK rocketry information.

Unfortunately due to illness, the shop is staying closed today, Saturday. For the last 2 days I have been struggling with a bug/flu thing and after 2 bad nights I am not really in a fit state today.

It has been a busy week getting orders out for UKAYROC teams and also catching up on orders placed since return after Christmas. Thanks to customers who have been patient whilst we catch up.

The London Model Engineering show at Alexandra Palace was excellent. As always many people seemed genuinely interested in rockets, so lets hope we get a dozen or two new flyers and hopefully new UKRA members from it. It's a great excuse to talk rockets all day without boring the pants off people or watching them go to sleep so I enjoyed it.

Savaloy, all be it half and naked got attention at the show, as always most people simply admiring my backend :)

Not much happening today, spent much of it asleep as was up most of the night working. Off to the London Model Engineering Exhibition at Alexandra Palace tomorrow.

Sanding is not particularly pleasant work, but try doing it outside in -2C. On the coldest day of the year it seemed to be the ideal day for sanding. Thankfully Phil decided to come and freeze with me.

Anyway another dodgey fin corrected in Savaloy, another heater fixed by the resident electrician Phil and more tubes sanded. Of course the pizza goes without saying.

We have decided to start a new series of factsheets. These factsheets will be single page documents which give hints and tips on topics that seem to need it. The factsheets are designed to be single pages that are easy to lookup and easy to pop in the field box.

One of the biggest set of issues surround the use of Estes Igniters, so this is the topic of our first factsheet.  FS001

Another day of action at Rocket Store. After hours of discussion, 14 cups of tea and a large pizza, Phil Bratley and I managed to fit 2 brackets to Savaloy, move some tubes about, build 1 Triton stand, fix a heater and invent 2 more electronics bays in Savaloy. A classic day!

Well it has been a great rest and good to recuperate over the festive season. We have many parcels that need packing, so we would ask that customers are patient whilst we get back into the swing of things and catch up after our time off.

Had to take it easy yesterday, back went again. Packed up some urgent BusinessPost parcels today and then spent most of the day cleaning up LOC kit details on the site. Started adding suggested motors for them, but it will take a while to get them all sorted. Few more small changes to the site done.

After 3 days of constant eating and drinking, I guess that's Christmas done and time to open the shop again.

Did some work on Savaloy yesterday with the help of Phil and Daniel Bratley, some serious fin modifications needed.

More stock ordered, more LOC tubing and nosecones on the way. Restock of QModeling stuff also ordered. Lastly, some more PML tubing and nosecones on their way.

Well that's it, all done for now, logging out and signing off for Christmas. If I haven't spoken to you personally over the last few weeks, we wish you a happy Xmas and a fantastic New Year. See you in a couple of days.

Another busy day packing and we have managed to get almost everything out now. A few orders from customers today looking for last minute gifts due to go out tomorrow and that's it, we are done for another Christmas.

Few Apogee Dynastar kits in today, mainly stock replacements, but an interesting relatively new kit the Firefox was included. Goes on any 24mm motor, although you need to get up to the F motors to get some decent altitude from it.

As we had to add this one in, we took the opportunity to revamp and update all the Apogee Dynastar kits. We updated all the specifications, descriptions and got all the suggested motors loaded. Most of the kits just recommend some tame old Estes motors, but we have simmed them all and added a few nice little Aerotech motors into the list.

With the last day for Royal Mail almost here, we concentrated on getting most of the parcels shipped today, just 3 or 4 left to go tomorrow morning. We are shipping on Monday and Tuesday, but courier only for delivery Christmas eve. All orders placed before 11am on Tuesday 23rd will be despatched that day and should make it for Christmas eve, however please remember explosives means it isn't a guaranteed service.

No time for coding and new stuff today, spent most of it packing. A few of the Harry Stine Handbook of Model Rocketry arrived today and also more air toys for last minute shoppers.

For those people using Internet Explorer, dont forget to get your security update for that security flaw in Internet Explorer.

Nightmare, another Leona Lewis won X Factor, gets a bit boring each year now. It was so boring I even coded three new pages for the site.
Company Landmarks
Web Releases
Xmas Details

Spent most of the day coding new parts of our backend system we use for order despatch and stock management.

Spent a few hours revamping all the Apogee Dynstar kit descriptions, including motor details for each kit. We have all the out of stock Dynastar kits including the new Firefox due in this week. If you want to take a look at the revamped kits, use this link Dynastar kits.

Off home now to watch XFactor, sad I know !

Another busy day, anyone would think it is Christmas. Lots of orders, so please bear with us, it is taking a few days to ship. Lots of new Beginners Bundles going out, so lets hope we get many more budding rocketeers joining this fantastic hobby next year.

Although many treat December EARS as a possible washout, the weather surprised us all again by being a glorious day, literally no wind, a clear blue sky with hardly any cloud all day. It was however freezing!. My knees and teeth have only just recovered.

Lots of rockets, some excellent flights by John Barber with his new RC controlled wing. An awesome Hypertek by Ray I think, I didnt see it but I heard that familiar Hypertek noise from under my gazeebo anyway.

Good to also see a couple of UKAYROC teams visiting to see what it is all about.

At long last we finally have uploaded the latest and best Rocket Store site we have developed. This new V2 release of our site has a brand new look and feel. We have rearranged a few things and added a new Projects section. We hope everyone likes the new site. If you have any comments let us know.

Well Christmas is coming and the Christmas presents have already started shipping out of the doors at Rocket Store. We have been very busy behind the scenes too working on our new website. This should be released in the next few days in time for some excellent Christmas shopping.

We have started a new Downloads Area within the Information section of our website. Initially we have created places for product datasheets and manuals. These will be built up over time to form a comprehensive list.

A couple more Thor X kits have arrived, one with G10 fins.
Thor X

Extra wiring looms for the RDAS 4.0 Tiny altimeters have arrived. Instead of having to move it between rockets, why not have a wiring loom left in each rocket. That way you can simply unplug your altimeter and move it from one rocket to another.
Wiring Looms

Rocket Store will be attending Black Knights on their 3rd Dec launch event. I am taking some rockets also to fly, so mobile shop will have to be shut for part of the day. The retail shop will be shut on Saturday 2nd Dec as we are going up Saturday morning to make a good weekend of it.

Sorry it has taken us so long. Many customers have asked us for aliphatic glue instead of PVA glue due to its sandability and extra strength. We finally have some in.
Aliphatic Glue

We have got 40 wiring looms coming in next week for the Tiny. They will cost £1.75 each. If you want to buy lots and save some money you can get them from Conrad part number 743100-89 at £1.30+VAT each + shipping which is £5.95. They are not on their website you have to order them over the phone with them.

A new version of the GUI V4.01 is now available from AED. Until now the V4 of the GUI was only needed for Tiny and wasn't to be used to program the Compact version. However this new release means the that both flavours of alitimeter can be programmed using this one version.

RDAS Tiny users should also ensure they are running V4.1 of the firmware.

A new release of the GPS firmware V2.3 has also been announced to fix the short download issue.

Please see their downloads page for further details.

We are currently in the process of setting up freight forwarders for both the west coast and east coast of the US. This will allow us next year to group orders together from the various US suppliers into pallets. This will reduce the shipping costs and hence have a direct effect on prices. We hope to be able to lower the prices of many of the HPR kit suppliers next year, such as BSD, PML and LOC.

TFR have now started producing a 1/2" pre-cut tubular nylon shockcord with sewn ends for mid power rockets. This is to compliment their already existing 9/16" and 1" sizes.
TFR Shockcord

With Xmas coming and those Xmas present orders starting to be placed, we are making sure we are well stocked. We are still waiting for a couple of shipments from the US, but most of the orders are now in.

It appears Dr Zooch has some new kits on the way, Titan IIIC SLV5, Mercury Redtone and the Mark II. Obviously we will be getting them in once they have been released.

Thanks to the Gadget Show on Channel 5, we have been going mad with orders. We are only just able to keep up, so please bear with us if placing an order.

Apologies for being out of stock of a few estes engine models. We are now all backup to stock levels.

Added a News article regarding Aeropoxy distribution in the UK. We have also added the products to our online store.

The new GWiz LCX is now here in stock and on our website for purchase.

A big thank you to all our customers, our website last month had over a half a million hits and 75,000 page views. We spend hours every week maintaining our site and online store and we believe this is what makes the site so appealing. Many thanks to all visitors!

We are currently updating the Quest models on our website with new photos and details to reflect their new catalogue for next year. There are a few new ones that are being added and will be arriving in stock in a few weeks.

A new self installer version of the RDAS 4.0 Tiny GUI has now been uploaded to the AED site. This is the same software as posted yesterday just in a self installer format.
http://www.aedelectronics.nl/rdas/download.htm

New delivery of Estes engines, topups for lots of sizes, but also for the first time we are now stocking C11-3, D11-P and D12-7.

Software, drivers and manual for the new RDAS tiny now available for download.
http://www.aedelectronics.nl/rdas/download.htm. Please be aware an automated installer version will be uploaded by AED tomorrow, so if you arent desperate hang on another day.

We have added a link to the new UK Aerospace Youth Rocketry Challenge competition sponsored by UKRA, Space Connections and others.

The November EARS meeting was a great show of rocketeers, many turned up to see the fireworks. They were spectacular! Also highlight for me was getting my Level 2 RSO on my trusty and well flown (looking a bit battered now) Thor. Pictures can be found at Hart Rockets website photos 9-15.

The new RDAS 4.0 is now here in stock and on our website for purchase.

The EU distributor for Estes, Ripmax are finally stocking C11-3, D11-P and D12-7 engines at last. We have some on the way, due to arrive Tuesday 7th November.

Added the new Thor X from BSD. Currently we have 1 standard kit, however we do have another one and also a G10 fin kit on its way.

Lots more rockets from Dr Zooch. Dr Zooch has many scale models of real rockets. Please bear with us whilst we add them to our site.

* Saturn V
* Space Shuttle
* R7 Luna
* Ares 1 (The Stick)
* Saturn 1B
* Saturn I Block II
* Saturn I SA5
* Saturn 1B Apollo 5
* Saturn 1B AS-203
* Discover Thor

3 new rockets have been added to our store from Red River Rocketry.
* Predator
* Starliner DST
* Stratos

Unfortunately our courier BusinessPost has increased their prices as of Oct 1st. We have therefore decided to remove our £1.50 handling fee we charged and include some of the cost of the packaging materials in with the cost of the courier. In total it means our postage has gone up by about 10% but there is now no handling fee. On average you are paying about 50p more than the cost of the actual postage which doesnt really even cover the packing material, but we will take that from the profit.
Please see our Shipping Rates for the full list list.

We have sold several BSD kits lately and the stock is getting a bit low. We have more 4" Thors, Diablos and Horizons on order. We also have one of the new Thor-X on order (the new Level3 75mm version). Wonder who will get it, hmmm !

Everything is due in about 3 weeks.

The UK distributor for Estes have at last got some coming in. They are due in end of October.

Version 4 of SpaceCAD has recently been released. The software now seems include a few features that were missing compared to RockSim. Version 4 is now IN STOCK at Rocket Store. For full details, please see our news article.

We have now finally caught up with all our orders. Thanks to all our patient customers who waited an extra day whilst be got back into our normal rhythym.

We are now back from KLOB but please bear with us, we have a lot of parcels and orders to ship so it will take us a couple of days to catch up.

Lots more chutes of all types and fire blankets. Apart from one or two types of chute we are back up to full strength now.

Excellent news, Dr Zooch great kits, such as their popular Saturn V and Space Shuttle are coming to Rocket Store. We will stock their complete range.

Not very exciting I know, but we have replenished our stock of NHP epoxy and foam.

Stock top ups for Fliskits and Stainless Steel Launch Rods arrived today.

What a great days flying at CROCK on Sunday. I think its the most people I have seen there and the weather was perfect, zero cloud, hardly any wind and 25C. Nice to see new faces too.

Red River Rocketry have a few great little rockets out, so we thought we would try some. We have their Predator, Stratos and Starliner coming into the store.

We have received several requests over the last few months re 7.5" airframe, coupler and bulkplates so we have now decided to keep albeit a limited amount of this in stock. This has arrived today from PML.

We are selling many Traxa beacons and we are often asked where a mobile Yagi antenna can be purchased from. The answer is Sand Piper Aerials. Although we will be unable to sell the aerials at a reduced price, we will at least be able to save you one lot of postage and packing by buying them direct from us

IRW week in Scotland was unfortunately plagued by a few showers however, it was still great fun to fly a few rockets and meet new faces. Big thank you to Uncle Bob for helping me with my first Contrail hybrid. It was a gorgeous take off on a sparky reload and I will definitely be flying more hybrids in the very near future. I can feel an nice K on a 48" 54mm Contrail coming on for K-LOB.

We are almost up to date catching up with orders whilst we have been away. Many thanks to all customers who have been patient since our return waiting for orders to be shipped.

We are just loading the car ready for IRW. Its only when you put all the camping stuff and the rocket stuff in the car at the same time that you realise how big a car you really need.

Rocket Store will also be flying their first ever hybrid rockets, engines supplied by Uncle Bob.

We have remote internet access, but please bear with us if we don't respond in our normal zippy manner.

There has been a shortage for quite a while now on some Estes engines, especially A10-3T,D12-5 and also more recently D12-3. These are finally now in, however there are still no D12-3 engines available

We are starting to sell a lot of PML components, especially airframe and couplers. We would like to thank rocketeers for their purchases, but it has given us a temporary stock problem especially on the larger 6" airframe and couplers.

We have ordered replacement and additional stock a few days ago, but it wont be in for another 10-14 days. We currently only keep a few pieces of each size, however we will be increasing this now and keep larger quantities in stock.

Many thanks to everyone for their support!

Bloo Goo now in. We have 50 Quart Kits of Poly Fiber Superfil Lightweight Epoxy Filler now in stock.

A couple of new ones from the Estes range just arrived today. They look great fun.

Rock-it
Porta Pot Shot

Our first shipment of SkyAngle has arrived, they look fabulous. We have their chutes, deployment bags, streamers, firewalls and swivels. The chutes have already been added to the site, deployment bags, streamers, firewalls and swivels will be added very shortly. These really are top quality stuff, the best I have seen in rocketry.

We have got some new 0845 numbers so that it lowers the cost of phoning us to a local call. The old 0870 numbers still work just incase you have those still, but the new numbers are now on the Contact Us page.

More PML goodies arrive. We have got some replacement kits in, but also some new ones for us, such as the Miranda, Intruder, Matrix and Cirrus.

We have also had several customers ask for the Quantum version of the payload bay kits so we have a few of the common sizes of those in also.

We are rapidly approaching our goal of full stock of all PML items, just a few more kits and some bits and bobs to get

Handbook of Model Rocketry is now available again.

It appears those Top Gear folks have permanently embedded the Top Gear Rocket Mini is a simple Flash game.

http://www.topgear.com/content/timetoburn/sections/games/08/game.html

Sounds a little scarey hearing Damians voice come out of your PC saying "3,2,1,purge".

For those who prefer SpaceCAD to Rocksim, we now have SpaceCAD V3.1 in stock.

We now have lots of JB Weld Adhesive and Kwik weld at a great price of just £4.95. Adhesive is ideal for all those hot parts of your rocket like the motor mount, whilst Kwik is useful for emergency repairs.

Some more Top Flight Recovery chutes arrive to top up low stock.

A fresh stock of decal paper has arrived today

Quite a lot going on in August:

• We have SkyAngle arriving
• We have some JB Weld arriving, we will be stocking this from now on. We have 90 packets of JBWeld adhesive and 30 packets of JBWeld Kwik (at just £4.95).
• We have 50 Superfil kits coming in. This is a fantastic lightweight filler.
• The new model rocketry Launch magazine arrives from the US.
• We are modifying some parts on our site and standardising some of the specifications for rocket kits. This will help us with future goodies yet to come.
• We are signing up as UK distributors for Aeropoxy products. This will offer UK rocketeers an alternative to West Systems and will offer structural adhesive, filler and laminating resins.
• Replacement stock for popular PML and LOC kits will be arriving, with some different kits coming also.
• Replacement stock for Top Flight chutes and Firewalls will be coming.

It is too darn hot !
It is too darn hot !
It is too darn hot !
It is too darn hot !
It is too darn hot !

We have signed up with a new distributor of the famous Stomp rockets and a few other fun water and air rockets. They should all arrive tomorrow and we will get them up onto the site as soon as we can. One of the air rockets does 1000ft!!

We have placed an order for some more PML kits, we have got the Miranda, Cirius Dart, Intruder and Matrix coming. They arent new PML kits, but we haven't stocked them before.

Our supplier for glues and tools has just topped us up. Apart from finishing epoxy (which should come in a couple of days), we are now all up to date.

A new model rocketry magazine. Please see the news item for full details.

We are now fairly restocked up on most sizes of phenolic, couplers and quantum.

2 new product lines are coming to Rocket Store.

Skyangle chutes from B2 Rocketry. What can you say, probably the best renowned chute on the market. We have just been approved as a dealer and we are awaiting our first order to be delivered.

PICO Altimeters and electronics are the smallest out there and ideal for model rockets or HPR rockets where you are limited for space.

If customers wish to reserve any of the above before they arrive, please let us know.

With our trip away to LDRS, the orders backed up a bit, however we are now up to date and all orders placed prior to 3pm today have now been processed and despatched.

I am off to LDRS 25 in Amarillo Texas, USA on Thursday 29th June for a few days. So the shop will be closed from Thursday through to Monday (inclusive). We should be back by Tuesday. The website will obviously stay open for orders, but we wont be able to process anything until our return.

Over the past few days, some orders have not gone out same or next day as we normally do. This has unfortunately been down to myself and my girlfriend getting serious cases of food poisoning. We apologise for the small delay but all orders are now up to date.

Just before anyone asks it was one of the owners of the burger vans at the Thanet Air Show that decided to inadvertanly give us the gift of 3 days chronic tummy upsets and far worse which I really cant describe here. But put it this way we are waiting for the samples to confirm salmanella or one of the lovely types.

Everything has now arrived from Fliskits and we have all models in stock. Although at the moment we dont know whats popular and whats not so we only have a limited supply of each until we understand what sells and what doesnt.

We will always endeavour to stock the entire range. It may take a day or two to get them all up on the site, there is quite a few models.

Some GWiz altimeters arrive for stock.

Great news, Fliskits comes to Rocket store. Please see our News section for full details.

More stock replacements for PML tubing and accessories.

More stock replacements for Quest Aerospace kits and Launch Systems.

More stock replacements for Top Flight Recovery chutes, firewalls and swivels.

Despite the weather on Sunday and late Saturday, many good flights were launched on the Saturday afternoon. Lets hope EARS in June has better weather.

QModeling have now arrived and are all in stock, we are stocking their complete range of retro kits. The kits look great quality even looking at the components in the bags.

Hooray at last its all here. We have every 38mm & 54mm kit BSD offer. The Level 3 Horizon kit is being held back for the BSD Altitude Challenge at UKRA in June.

It has been a while since we initially announced our agreement with QModeling. Unfortunately QModeling have had a production issue with some of their decals and havent been able to ship them. They solved the issue a little while ago and our shipment has been sent. We are expecting them in the next few days. We are sorry for the delay, but I am sure they will be worth the wait.

The Kent Canterbury Extra newspaper (part of the Kent Messenger Group) has an advertorial on Rocket Store next week, issue distributed on Tuesday 25th April 2006. The text should hopefully explain a little about what rocketry is all about, alleviate some of the worries and get more people to visit the shop.

The BSD kits are starting to come in, but as usual the shipment have got split up in customs. So far the following have arrived.

1 x Apache (38mm)
1 x Intrepid 2 stage 54mm to 38mm
2 x 4" Thor (54mm)

Squirrel Works have launched 2 new model rocket kits, called the Interstellar Probe and Valkyrie. They are both now in stock.

Valkyrie
Interstellar Probe

Good news, the Quest order has finally arrived. We now have, with the exception of 1 or 2 kits, all the Quest line now back in stock.

We have taken delivery of 2 PML CoPilot altimeters.

We are now out stock of approximately 50% of the Quest line of products. Unfortunately due to lack of stock at Quest we have had to wait for a new manufacturing run. However almost every kit is on order and they should arrive in the next few days.

More stock replacements for Estes, we are now back up to full stock and have all UK Estes distributed kits now in. We are waiting for delivery from the US of some of the US only kits not available in the UK yet.

Many people have asked actually what kits are on order. So here is the list.

1 x 3" 38 special
1 x 3" 54 special
1 x Apache (38mm)
1 x Apache (54mm)
1 x Canadian Sprint (38mm)
1 x 4" Diablo (38mm)
1 x 5.5" Diablo (54mm)
1 x 3" Gila Monster (54mm)
2 x 4" Horizon (38mm)
1 x Horizon 54 (54mm)
1 x Intrepid 2 stage 38mm to 38mm
1 x Intrepid 2 stage 54mm to 38mm
1 x Little John (54mm)
2 x 3" Thor (38mm)
1 x 3" Thor Extreme Performance (54mm)
2 x 4" Thor (54mm)

More stock replacements for LOC, mainly fireblankets but also a Norad Pro Max kit to add to the LOC kits in stock.

Unfortunately we have had to increase the Royal Mail postage fees in line with their April annual price hikes. Please remember we charge carriage at cost on Royal Mail and Courier. It has however put 25p on the basic £3.60 under 1 Kg charge now making it £3.85.

Squirrel Works have launched 2 new model rocket kits, called the Interstellar Probe and Valkyrie. They are both on order and should arrive in a week or 2.

Valkyrie
Interstellar Probe

We have taken delivery of a small batch of smlimline retainers of most sizes and flavours in the circlip and threaded internal ring type.

These retainers are ideal for minimum diameter rockets or just rockets where there is not much space around the motor mount, such as a LOC Vulcanite.

We have been informed by Scott at BSD that our order is complete and should ship monday, so we should see it her within a week or 2.

We have just finished updating the shop and we thought we would put a picture of it up in all its glory with its new (very expensive) slatwall. It is only a small shop but we think it is even better now.

For all those HPR flyers, dont worry we haven't stopped selling them, they are just too big to hang on slatwall.

More PML components arrive, mainly couplers, payload bays and coupler/baseplate assemblies. We are fairly well stocked on most PML components now, although there is a bit more to come, such as centre rings, fin replacements, fg nosecones and a few other bits and bobs. Can't get much more, running out of room!

The PML hybrid ready kits are now in stock. The kits we have are:

o PML Delta (38mm)
o PML Gamma (38mm)
o PML Ion (38mm)
o PML Aurora (54mm)
o PML Cygnus (54mm)
o PML Eagle (54mm)

We have passed our BSD order to Scott for manufacturer. Hopefully he is beavering away and they should ship by 1st April. We are investigating shipment couriers with BSD to see if we can get them here ASAP after the 1st April.

Rocket Store has now signed the deal with QModeling and our first order has been placed. We hope they will be in stock in a couple of weeks. They have been added to the online store as special order, however once our first shipment arrives we will be stocking them as a permanent product and except for supplier shortages, we should always have them in stock.

We have almost finished tweaking our online shipping module on our website. We have now reduced all the shipping options so that the cost is exact to the penny what we pay. We have also reduced the order handling fee to £1.50 to cover the cost of the packaging material. We buy in bulk now so we are able to pack cheaper. We have made all the options clearer and also made it more clear about the £1.50 order handling fee.

There are still a couple of more tweaks yet to do, such as offer a "Free pickup" option and also to not show the Royal Mail option if you have engines, but we are almost there.

A restock of glues, cutting mats and a few other goodies now in. We have now got some white PVA glue in and also a selection of hobby knives.

We are just putting together an order for these so that we can make these a stock item. If you would like to purchase once ready for arrival, feel free to order one from the site. The Circlip version is great for minimum diameter rockets.

We have added the Rouse Tech Monster Motors casings to the website. We do have a few of the smaller cases coming in but most of the range will remain on special order, especially whilst Aerotechs are not CE marked. Once the CE marking is complete we may well stock more of them depending upon number of sales.

We have updated our website and hopefully made the way we show stock items even clearer after much great feedback from our customers. As always we plan to stock as much as possible, but there are some items that are just not economical to stock.

For Stock Items it now clearly shows the value we have in stock. If we don't have any then it wont let you order them.

For Special Order Items that we have in our site but do not stock, this is now clearly shown with an approximate delivery time.

Some more goodies in from PML, including some 29mm kits ready for Aerotechs being available again:

o Amraam 2 (29mm)
o Blk Brant (29mm)
o Bill Puppy 2.1 (29mm)
o Callisto (29mm)
o Explorer (38mm)
o IO (38mm)
o D Region Tomahawk (38mm)

Some more goodies in from LOC, we have ordered some of their motor mount adapters incase customers want to reduce the engine size in one of their LOC kits. Also we have got a few 29mm mount kits in ready for Aerotechs being available again:

o Aura (29mm)
o Graduator (29mm)
o Legacy (29mm)
o Lil Nuke (29mm)
o Nuke Pro Max (38mm)
o Onyx (29mm)
o Star Fighter 152 (29mm)
o Vulcanite (38mm)
o Weasel (29mm)

We have order some of PML's hybrid ready kits for the hybrid flyers. There is a shortage of good kits for hybrid glyers and a general lack of info relating to whether kits can be used for hybrid engines. We hope to address these issues soon. The kits ordered are:

o PML Delta (38mm)
o PML Gamma (38mm)
o PML Ion (38mm)
o PML Aurora (54mm)
o PML Cygnus (54mm)
o PML Eagle (54mm)

Very soon we will be able to sell the QModeling sports class rockets. Please see our news release for more.

Our order for Aerosleeves fibreglass sleeving arrived today. We have added the quantities to the site so its ready to order. At the moment we are only stocking the fibre glass sleeving, however if customers want the carbon fibre one let us know and we may consider stocking it if there are enough takers.

The remaining PML tubing, couplers and nosecones have arived. Also a Tiny Pterodactyl sneaked its way in. Now that we have Kraft Phenolic stock we will try our very best to keep the levels of stock up as high as we can.

A couple of bugs have been fixed on the website. It was found that any product in more than one category was listed twice when the new Manufacturer filter was used. Also there were some issues with pagination when the Manufacturer filter was used. Both have now been corrected.

We have made a couple of changes to the Online Store part of our website. Due to an ever increasing list of categories, we have changed the category list to a dropdown list rather than show them all as links. This allows us to add extra goodies.

The first goodie to go into the spare space on the left is a Manufacturer filter. You can now browse products by Manufacturer instead of by category.

We are working on a great new feature on our site which will give us the most comprehensive kit list and search capabilities on the net, so please bear with us. We can't divulge too much as it is under raps at the moment, but it will be released in approx 8-12 weeks.

Looks like our order for PML components has got split up, only 1 of 3 large boxes arrived, but it had some tubing nosecones and airframes in it, so we have added what has physically arrived hear to the site. The rest will arrive Monday 27th Feb (according to Customs).

With PML selling well and 29mm rockets likely to be in demand shortly, we have ordered in some more kits from PML and also a few 29mm from LOC. The following are on route, due to arrive in 7 - 10 days.

o PML Amraam 2
o PML Blk Brant (29mm)
o PML Bull Puppy 2.1
o PML Callisto (29mm)
o PML D Region Tomahawk (38mm)
o PML Explorer (38mm)
o PML IO (38mm)
o LOC Aura (29mm)
o LOC Graduator
o LOC Legacy
o LOC Lil Nuke
o LOC Nuke Pro Maxx
o LOC Onyx
o LOC Starfighter 152 (29mm)
o LOC Vulcanite (38mm)
o LOC Weasel (29mm)

We have been speaking with Aerosleeves regarding their fibre glass sleeving and have now ordered a wheelbarrow full (well a lot anyway) of 2", 3", 4" and 6" sleeving. We are currently awaiting a delivery date for this shipment but will keep you posted. We have added it in our Online Store under Components>Composites so that you can see our prices. The stock is set to zero until it all arrives.

We have been experiencing some website problems this morning with the server. These have now been resolved, we apologise for any inconvenience.

We have ordered a bundle of PML components such as their Kraft Phenolic tubes , nosecones and couplers. We anticipate them arriving the week starting Feb 13th.

Thanks to a recent sale of BSD to a new owner, the exclusive distribution through another dealer in the UK has ended. We will be stocking them as soon as he is shipping them at the end of April.

Dynastar have been now been added to our stock. Dynastar is a brand name of rockets made by Apogee in the US.

o Snarky
o Stonebreaker
o Rising Star Payloader
o Rip Roar
o Orion

We don't have a huge stock of these, so first come first served.

Our website has become much busier than expected (we get just under 40,000 page views a month) and we have therefore been busy upgrading our system from using Microsoft Access as the backend to full Microsoft SQLServer. This upgrade will ensure we can handle a huge amount of traffic and allow us to add new functionailty to the site.

Many thanks to all our customers for being patient over the last couple of evenings whilst the work has been done.

Another new Estes rockets has been added to our stock:

o Estes Big Daddy - A new 24mm Skill Level 2 rocket. Its a big fat one.

We don't have a huge stock of these, so first come first served.

We have several PML kits now in stock

o Bull Pup.
o Tomahawk
o Amraam 3
o Amraam 4
o Small Endeavour 38mm
o Phobos 38mm
o 1/4 Scale Patriot

Well with 2005 behind us, whats new in 2006. Here are just some of the items we are looking into:

o Dynastar Rockets. These are all great D and E powered rockets. For details, please visit http://www.dynastar-rockets.com/. These are on order and expected to arrive week ending 14th Jan 2006. We are planning for these to be a regular stocked item.

o PML Composites. We would like to stock the new PML composites.

o Aerotech. We have been approved as an Aerotech dealer and we will stock their kits and motors once they are CE marked later this year.

o SkyAngle Chutes. Again we have been approved as a dealer and will get some stock in shortly.

If there is anything else you would like us to stock this year, then just let us know.

It's been a busy first couple of months, but we have done well. Most of the store areas are now setup and fully stocked. We have a few areas left yet, such as components, motors and some more Level 3 stuff, but its been a very good start. We would like to wish all our customers and visitors a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we look forward to starting all over again on the 3rd Jan 2006.

Over the last month or two we have experienced several problems and issues with using Paypal to take regular credit cards, however this has been resolved as all cards are now processed through Protx. Please note we have never had any problems with customers using their Paypal account to pay. That part of Paypals operation has always been reliable.

Using Protx also means we can now accept American Express online as well as offline. We believe these changes will make purchasing a far more reliable process.

Our shipment of the Modern High-Power Rocketry 2 by Mark Canepa has finally arrived. We were hoping for them to arrive before Christmas, but just not this close. Never mind you can always buy someone a late present.

Our first shipment of Squirrel Works rocket kits have now arrived. These are great high fliers, all very light kits with mylar competition parachutes. You can find them under the Model Rockets category Squirrel Works.

Our first shipment of Quest Aerospace rocket kits have now arrived. Quest make some great model rocket kits from Easy to Skill Level 4. We have almost 90% of their complete range now in stock. You can find them under the Model Rockets categories, E2X, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4.

We are currently arranging for a shipment of Squirrel Works rockets to wing their way to Kent. These great futuristic high fliers will be part of our regular stock.

More Estes and Top Flight Recovery stuff has arrived, but we are still waiting for more LOC stuff. Also we are waiting for our first shipments of DG & Rocketry and Quest Aerospace to arrive.

We are all out of Estes Snapshots and the main distributor is all out too. We are awaiting more info.

Our goal has always been to keep the majority of our product range in stock at all times so that you dont have to wait. But unfortunately due to a large number of orders we have run out of a few items at the moment, namely LOC and TFR nomex firewalls and also a few models of Estes rockets. But rest assured a new shipment of TFR nomex firewalls will arrive this week, more Estes will arrive on Tuesday this week and more LOC stuff end of next week.

Our first shipment of Quest Aerospace rocket kits should be arriving soon. Quest make some great model rocket kits from Easy to Skill Level 4. We have almost 90% of their complete range on their way so there will be lots of choice.

We have been able to negotiate a slightly better rate for the most common courier service. This means it as dropped from £13.58 to £11.75. We will continue to badger the courier so we can get it below £10 if possible.

A large batch of Top Flight 1.1oz ripstop chutes of various sizes are now in and will be added to the store in the next 24 hours. They are just as good value as Recovery technologies and also great quality, so we have no problem recommending them instead of Recovery Technologies. We will leave what we have left in stock of the RT chutes on the site, but sizes will be removed as they are sold. 1.1oz ripstop chutes are ideal for model rockets and also for minimum diameter rockets because they pack into a very small small.

If you are still using the chute that came with your Estes rocket, just bin it and get one of these.

We are getting several complaints from customers that they are unable to pay with their credit card on the Paypal site. Paypal's site seems temperamental and sometimes hangs or just fails. This doesn’t seem to effect people paying using a Paypal account, just customers paying by credit card who don’t have a Paypal account.

Due to the unreliability of that part of Paypal's service, we are currently changing to Nat West streamline for in store card payments and Protx for online card payments. This will improve the reliability of credit card transactions. We can only apologise to customers who have tried to order unsuccessfully.

More new products added, we now have some of Colin Rowes retainers in stock. The coned retainers look particularly smart.

Our first stock of hobby tools and glues has come in. We now have enough epoxy to build a small village.

Unfortunately we are unable to get any more Recovery Technologies parachutes once our stock is out. This is due to RT signing up for an exclusive deal with another rocket vendor. However Top Flight Recovery chutes are just as good and still made of 1.1oz ripstop nylon in Orange. TFR chutes should arrive next week.

Business Post offer a very cheap service called HomeDoc, but it is big enough to put a couple of packs of motors in. So if you urgently need a couple of packs, the postage isnt too bad now. It's only just a little more than standard Royal Mail parcel service. Also the service doesnt require a signature, so they will put it straight through your letterbox.

Today we have managed to get an account with one of the main distributors for all the high street hobby shops. This will allow us to offer all those hobby items needed for rocket building. We should also be able to at least match their prices and in most cases better them.

After several orders, we now finally have about 97% of the whole Estes range in stock. There are just a few rocket kits that the one and only distributor in the UK has on backorder. Hopefully they will arrive shortly.