Rubber Band Powered Glider - Brings Back Memories!

Thank you Nettie!

My order arrived yesterday [Mon]. I was not expecting it for another week. Only 4 days, the Post Office must be getting better, and everything was intact. I've already began assembling the Micro Maxx and am awaiting a nice day to fly. I am used to flying very large rockets to extreme altitudes - this will be a real switch. Instead of loading the truck with all my gear and driving to the club site for the weekend, now I can get my "fix" right in the back yard.

I was pleasantly surprised with the little extra you threw in. It has already flown up and down the hallway a couple of times. I didn't know they made them anymore.

That little rubber band airplane brought back many memories of my childhood. When I was 6 my grandmother gave me one of those for my birthday, they cost a whopping 50 cents, back in 1958, I had been eyeing one in the 5 and Dime store [Woolworths] for months, begging for one every time I visited Grandma. She lived right behind the fire station. When I would come visit on weekends, I would go over to the station house and polish the brass on the old antique fire truck, for which the firemen would give me a nickel, and then let me slide down the pole as much as I wanted. In those days a nickel would buy a lot of penny candy. [several pieces for a penny!] But I was saving my nickels for that airplane! Turns out, one of the fireman walked over to her house one day and suggested that if she wanted to make a little boy happy on his birthday that would be the thing to get me.
It was the first present opened, after that, the others didn't matter. I was out the door playing with it in the firehouse yard. They had to forcibly come and get me to go back inside and open the rest of my presents. I could not tell you what any of the others were, but I shall always remember that little toy airplane. As they say in the old time movies “Thanks for the memories!”

Jim H. – Savannah, GA

OPROC Club Launch 1/17/2009

Nettie

I'm sending you a few photos of our OPROC club launch 1/17. What a great day no wind not that warm 46 degrees but all in all a great day none the less. About 40 rocket took to the air between 11:00 - 3:00 . BTW 95% of all launches were on Quests new igniters with no problems at all.

All the Best - John Ludwig
Olympic Peninsula Rocketry 4-H Club

Quest Will Share Your Story

Hi there!

Here at Quest we receive your stories and share them in the office. It has been decided that if Quest receives a story that we would like to share with others and you have given us permission to share we will post it here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Nettie

BIG '3' DAY SALE

Quest is happy to announce the
'Biggest Sale' of the 2008 year!

40% off everything -
- model rocket kits
- model rocket engines
- supplies

- equipment
- and other fun flying items

Visit us by clicking the sale poster
to the left and have fun shopping!

Remember it is for 3 days only
December 5 - 6 - 7

Happy Holidays from all of us
Quest Aerospace

BTW - All kit items (special combo packs) already have the 40% Discount Applied

Shipping of new Q2G2 igniters begins

We’ve begun shipping our new Q2 'Generation Two' (G2) igniters. These are absolutely the best igniter we’ve ever produced. The Q2G2 is made from a pair of twisted and insulated lead wires with a welded micro bridge wire. They are very durable and are very well suited for cluster ignition.

The tip is virtually indestructible. The long insulated lead wires really help prevent shorts caused by the wires touching each other and… the lead wires are actually long enough that they sit outside (not under) the engine exhaust, so your micro clips stay clean!

You’ll need to use caution when using Q2G2. They are specifically designed for use with the Quest 9V launch controller. Other brands of controllers may fire the igniter when the safety key is inserted. This is because the all-fire current on the Q2G2 is very low at an average of 150ma. This is close to the same current that flows through light bulb filaments. SO BE CAREFUL and always do a continuity check with your system first if it is not a Quest launch controller.

Why make the igniter so sensitive? Simple… by far, the largest users of Quest rockets and engines are youth groups like 4-H and Scouts. Keeping the current needed to fire the igniters lower increases the success rate for launching. We’ve been doing this for twenty years now and by far the largest customer service issue has always been ignition problems. Most of these are tied directly to the type and condition of battery used (people tend to not follow directions and don’t use fresh Alkaline batteries).

If your hobby store doesn’t stock the Q2G2’s yet, they are available on the Quest website

http://www.questaerospace.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=7024&eq=&Tp=

A peek into the Quest Research & Development Lab

A good deal of our time here at Quest is spent developing new products. Some of the ideas are submitted to us from rocketeers and professional designers, but most are developed by us. Sometimes a new product is nothing more than “packaging” old products in a new way like our new Prod. No 5750 STARHAWK 6 ROCKET PARTY SET. This is a product that is designed to make it easy for a retail store to sell rockets to a Mom or customer with no rocket knowledge at all.

Some R&D projects are very large in scope. Quest is currently designing an entire new line of mid-power model rockets and engines. These projects can take many months, even years! The Quest mid-power rockets will include several black powder rocket engines in the D, E, and F power range. Once the engine specifications and performance get finalized, then rest of the line starts unfurling – a new igniter – a new launch pad and controller- and finally kits. We gave a sneak preview of some of our kit ideas at NARAM in August 2008.

An R&D project can be for a specific vehicle. Here’s some work we’re doing on the new NASA ARIES launch vehicle.

Here’s some ideas we’re developing for new MICRO MAXX rocket kits.





And sometimes the most fun projects are what we call “Blue-Sky”. This is when we just have an idea and play with it.



















SPEV is an acronym for “Spare Part Elimination Vehicle”.

Product development is definitely my favorite part of this business. If you have a great product idea, please feel free to contact us. We do follow a pretty strict protocol to protect your idea – so everyone must sign non-disclosure documents before we ever look at it.

By-the-way… Quest is also introducing Parts on our website soon. Look for that announcement and start designing your own cool looking rockets!




Bill Stine
NAR#24
President
Quest Aerospace, Inc.

Quest at NCASE 2008

This is the brawn side of the “A-team” from Quest. The A-team is what Bill called us when he asked if we could/would cover the NCASE show for him. (It couldn’t be that he just wanted to be in Chicago himself getting his latest award and needed somebody else to go to DC.) Anyway Suzy Sprague and her brawny husband (me, Jack) have been friends with Nettie, Scott and Bill for ‘a-long-time-now’ and are enthusiastic about the sport and hobby of model rocketry. Suzy speaks both rocketry and teacher, and is thus the perfect person to represent Quest at the National Convention of Air and Space Educators in our nation’s capitol. And me, I talk rockets with anybody that will listen, and I can set up the display booth and move boxes. We make a great Quest A-team.


Our Quest display booth

NCASE was held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott just across the Potomac from the national mall area of the District of Columbia. This year there were about 450 educators attending from across the country and another 120 or so representatives of the Civil Air Patrol. Even though Quest has been at this convention several times in the past, most of the comments we got started with some variation of ‘I did not know that Quest did model rockets.’ But we could eventually turn each conversation into ‘How can Quest help you teach aerospace?’ Some of the highlights of the show from our perspective make some of these points pretty well.

The CAP has a new rocketry and space study program. They offer three levels of study involving different types of rockets and increasing knowledge and skills of the cadet. The three CAP levels are named after three increasingly powerful American rocket boosters; Redstone, Titan and Saturn. Quest has support for both the water rockets and model rockets used in this new study guide. And at the Saturn Level, the Quest models of the Tomahawk, X-15 and Terrier-Orion satisfy both the flight, and scale elements for the cadet.

The Quest X - 15 Sally and her Dad, Scott

Speaking of the X-15, one of the most famous X-15 pilots was Scott Crossfield. His daughter was at NCASE and really liked our X-15 on display. Sally Crossfield Farley is running a scholarship foundation in her Dad’s name, and was very interested in anything that could bring students into aerospace; like flying a model of her father’s rocket-plane. Sally left before we could donate the display to her, so I still owe an X-15 kit to the Crossfield Foundation.

And two other Quest features that can help bring aerospace effectively to the classroom are our beginning level kits, and our educator bulk-packs. The entry kits quickly caught the attention of elementary educators. Either the ‘almost-ready-to-fly’ Starhawk with its one-piece plastic fin-can, or the new Astra with its novel ‘through-the-wall’ fin attachment tabs are frequently seen as superior fits for the first-time builder, and for first-time teachers too.

One other group that was at NCASE helping catch student’s attention and bring them into careers in aerospace was the Team America Rocket Challenge. This group, sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and by the National Association of Rocketry holds the worlds largest model rocket contest each year. The task varies each year but usually involves flying a raw egg to an exact altitude. This year’s challenge task could be handled by a modified Quest Courier egg-lifter. And our payload rockets can give beginners experience in flying the altimeter used by TARC. Several Texas High Schools use the Courier and the Zenith to introduce their TARC teams to the building and flying skills required for this contest. Trip Barber, the President of the NAR and one of the founders of the TARC contest liked our characterization of the Quest line as training wheels for TARC teams.

Suzy and I got packed up and back home safely, and are just now getting the contact names from the show back to Quest Headquarters. We are hoping that getting the Quest brand and products out in the open will better help our educators boost the interest and activity levels of hobby rocket around the country.

Fly ‘em Safe! --Jack