He used an Estes rocket motor to light the bottle rockets?  Why?  He could have just used the rocket motor igniter directly on the bottle rocket wicks.  Or easier still, a strand of stell wool wrapped around the wick with a 4.5 volt power source that you can switch on remotely.  Easy to do.
When I was in college, I launched bottle rockets off of the wings of a Sig Kadet r/c airplane.