[omni-scientist]

This was hobby of mine in my early teens in the 60's. I grew up in Miami and used to build Estes rockets then, but found few places to launch them. In our neighborhood, recovering the rockets was a problem involving going into other yards in our subdivision.

The best place we found was just west of Miami International Airport and the Palmetto expressway. Doubtful my rockets would reach high enough but I always waited until an approaching flight passed over to launch since we new we had at least a few minutes before the next flight came in.

[riverrunner]

Lived out in the country had plenty of fields to send up ours in

[GingisK]

My brothers and I made our rockets from scratch. We didn't use kits very often. We made our own motors as well. Those were either black powder, caramel candy (Melted KNO₃ + sugar), or zinc and sulpher.

If you want to see a website of a serious amateur rocket maker, see Richard Nakka