
At some point in every rocketeer's stint in the hobby, the urge to scratch build a rocket or upscale an existing kit or simply to make the kit they are building stronger arises. When that urge strikes, many hobbyists surf the Internet, their local hobby shop or even the nearby Home Depot or Lowes hardware stores looking for "mis-labeled" rocket components that often sit on shelves marked as fender washers, U-bolts and such.
A great place to start looking for better hardware that was designed with hobby rocketry in mind is already located at one shop, Giant Leap Rocketry. Giant Leap has been around a long time, starting out with full page ads in the various hobby magazines that reminded me of the ads J.C. Whitney used to run. It was obvious they had a plethora of goodies, even back then, and when their Internet site was launched in 1998, they were inundated with people seeking quality alternatives to the higher priced goods they were used to seeing elsewhere.


















