Went out to the field today with one of the club owned trainers and put my son on the buddy box for 3 flights. He started off with the normal overcontrolling, but by the third flight, he spent most of the flight flying around without any assistance or me having to take over.

So for a while now I've been trying to figure out what would be of interest (in terms of a hobby) to my soon to be 9 year old son. Like many kids his age, he loves computer/video games, but I wanted to find something that required being outside.

At some point I remembered I used to shoot off model rockets when I was a lot younger and had a blast doing it.

So on the way home from work one day I stopped by a LHS and picked up a 'starter set', which was an estes Alpha III rocket with launcher and all the needed stuff, including two motors to get started.

So we did the minimal building required together, got it ready, and went out to the flying field to fire it off.

The initial look on his face was worth every penny spent on it, even if he never does it again. He's very excited and seems to love it. We bought some more motors, with a bit more power, and on the first shot the shoot didn't open and it was out of sight. Kinda cool, and he took it well with a 'well , I'll just get another one.'