Gavin, congrats to you and your son. Any chance we could see a picture?
Come to think of it, I never got a picture. I think I have one picture left on my last roll of film. I'll take a picture shortly. But, it's nothing to marvel at; it's just really thin, that's all. One important note is that the rocket was thin enough that the hanger protruded rather nicely into the hole inside of the ship (enough that it would significantly interfere with the spinning of the rubber bands). I had enough foresight to cut the bottom of the hangar so it wasn't protruding into the inside of the ship. When we were having our initial problems with the overly thick rubber bands popping off of the hook, one of the officials proudly and quickly pointed out that we were having our problem because we made the ship too thin. I said, "Uh...All of the ships have the same size hole on the inside. That has nothing to do with it." Then he said, "Yeah, but the bottom of your hangar must be protruding into the ship and it's interfering with the rubber bands." I said, "No...I cut off the bottom of the hanger. It doesn't touch the inside of the ship at all." Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
Also, a lot of the ships were losing their hangars and fins. We epoxied everything on and didn't have any problems. Especially with the ship as thin as it was, I made sure we used a good amount of Epoxy to hold the hangar on. Epoxy is da bomb.
Also of note, I did ever-so-slightly angle the fins upwards so that the aerodynamics kept the back end up in the air (at least theoretically). I’m not sure if this made any difference and I’m sure it wasn’t as significant as shaving the rocket very thin.
. Additionally, I grabbed the wrong rubber bands from our house (they were waaaaay too big). So, we had to use “Extra” rubber bands at the Derby and they turned out to be waaaay to thick to be of any value. They kept popped off when we wound my son’s space ship. His ship ended up traveling 2 inches and stopping off the start on his first heat 
. Anyway, I found 3 “correct” rubber bands from a spare kit and was able to fix his ship up right for the second round. Garrett went on to not lose a heat after that and he won the Pack Championship. I was quite surprised. 
