Back In The Day, Part 1

This is kind of a long post, so please bear with me.  It is an exciting(?) account of my initial introduction and involvement in this wonderful hobby of Space Modeling....

INTRODUCING: MODEL ROCKETRY

My first ever exposure to the hobby of model rocketry happened in 1969.  I was a nerdy 13 year old, going through all the usual difficulties of the time for guys in their early teens.  I happened to be buddies with the kid who lived across the street, Marc K.

 I perceived Marc as being even nerdier than myself.  He was very science minded and focused on everything he did. His father was a colonel in the Air Force, so, naturally Marc always had the adequate monetary resources for funding his various hobby interests.  Model rocketry was one of them.

One hot afternoon in August of 1969, Marc invited me to come along with he and his dad to go see a model rocket contest being held that week on the grounds of the United States Air Force Academy. This event was called NARAM-11, a national annual championship meet attended by model rocket enthusiasts from across the country.

I was instantly smitten by seeing all of these really cool, colorful model rockets, and watching them ascend to astounding heights, deploy a bright parachute, and drift back to the ground.

I had put together many plastic static display models over the years, but had never encountered anything like these model rockets. They actual did something...they flew, just like real rockets!  They didn’t get built just to sit on a shelf and collect dust.

 I didn’t know it at the time, but I was watching some of the biggest names associated with the hobby  – many of them pioneers of model rocketry that I would later read about in the hobby magazines, and a few that I would actually get to meet later on.

I also became familiar with the names of Estes Industries and Centuri Engineering, the two most prominent rocket manufacturers present at the event.   I obtained copies of their 1969 product catalogs from their vendor booths as well as the official program of NARAM-11.  I still have these.

Keeping in mind that 1969 was the height of the Apollo Space Program, culminating with men landing on the moon that year, a hobby that involved working model rockets was bound to be all the rage.

Following the visit to NARAM-11, I went home with all of that intriguing reading material in hand.  I pored over the pages of those catalogs, marveling at all of the cool rocket kits being offered – from tiny featherweight models all the way up to the mighty Saturn V !!  I digested all of the technical sections in the catalogs, describing how the models were constructed, the engines that made them go, how they flew, and were recovered.  Marc also lent me his copies of Model Rocketry Magazine.

Hooked!

In those days, I didn’t have an allowance or any other form of monetary income to permit me to purchase model rockets, so I had to be content with accompanying Marc to participate in launching his models.  At home, I even went as far as to construct my own parachutes out of plastic bread bags.  I recall many evenings spent out in the street in front of my house, rolling up these home-made ‘chutes, tossing them into the air as high as I could, using metal washers as the weights suspended under them, constantly tweaking and making adjustments to optimize their performance.  This may all sound goofy, but the exercise proved to be very valuable experience for what was to come….

MODEL ROCKET BABY STEPS

Fast forward to 1973.  By this time I was a nerdy high school junior, going through all of the usual difficulties of the time for guys in their upper teens.  Only now, I held a part-time job and could afford to spend some money on model rockets (and Uriah Heep albums!).

Accompanied by Marc K., I visited a hobby shop in Colorado Springs called Jack Aycock’s Custom Hobbies.  This store catered mostly to the R/C airplane crowd, but Jack carried a respectable supply of model rockets and accessories.  To me, it was like being in a candy store!  Atop one of the shelves stood an already built model rocket – an Estes ‘Mini-Brute’ Hornet that one of the store employees had put together.  Marc suggested that I buy that model and use it to get my feet wet with launching a rocket.  I followed his advice and bought the rocket for around $1.50, along with an Estes Mosquito kit, an older Starblazer kit, and some engines.   I still have that Hornet.

SKYWATCHERS / ROMAR

Once I had built some models of my own and had some rocket-flying experience under my belt, it was time to take the next step.   Marc invited me to come along with him to a meeting of a local model rocket club that was just being organized – The Skywatchers Rocket Club.

Initially, this group consisted of about five or six members, mostly guys in their late twenties or older. The core of the club consisted of Lester and Barb Coburn, Glade and Lillian Gordon, and Frank Gee.  Marc and I joined the club and began participating in launch meets, public demonstration launches at shopping centers, and meetings.  Since I had taken some advanced English and Creative Writing classes in high school, I was appointed as the editor of the club’s newsletter, The Cosmic Steppingstone.  I remained in that role on and off over the next ten years, up until the club ceased to exist in 1984.

In early 1974, the Skywatchers gained sanction as an NAR section, the Rocky Mountain Association of Rocketry (ROMAR), Section # 331.    At the same time, I became an NAR member myself (#25180). 

Things literally ‘took off’ at this point.  Bill Roe, one of the founding pioneers of the hobby, generously donated to the club most of the launch and range equipment that had been used by the Peak City NAR section in the 1960s.  This consisted of launch racks, a central launch controller, communications and PA systems, and tracking theodolites.   The Skywatchers/ROMAR club at this time was using a large empty field on Airport Road roughly ¾ of a mile east of Academy Boulevard in Colorado Springs. It’s ironic that the second home I later owned was part of a residential area built on the site of the down-range area of this very same flying field!  I often wondered if the remains of some of my old long-lost model rockets were unearthed by the construction crews.

 I recall one Sunday shortly after obtaining all of that range equipment, all of us club members spent a day at the field and, instead of flying rockets, trenched in permanent phone lines connecting the designated launch area and the tracking station locations.

Once things were set up and organized, Skywatchers/ROMAR began holding regular launches every other Sunday.  Interspersed with sport meets were some of the club’s first NAR-sanctioned contests and organized demonstration launches at local shopping centers and parks.  At that time, ROMAR interacted with a couple of other front range clubs:  a group in Pueblo (PAR) led by Lloyd Armstrong, and the “Rapirhawks”, another Colorado Springs club led by Warren Layfield.  (At this writing, Warren is still active as ‘Senior Advisor’ in a modern Colorado Springs club – COSROCS).

Up until mid-1974, club meetings were held in the back room at Jack Aycock’s Custom Hobbies store.  Not long afterward, Jack retired and sold the shop, so ROMAR was left to find another meeting place.  This happened in the form of being able to use the Hillside Community Center on South Wahsatch St. in Colorado Springs.

THE EARLY DAYS

As for my own rocketry activity, I began small with the building of an Estes Mosquito kit.  This tiny rocket was promptly lost after its first flight, a common problem with Mosquitos!   

I did happen to find the model a couple of days after its flight.  It was sitting in the middle of a motorcycle trail adjacent to the launch field – crushed to smithereens!  Not even the nose cone was salvageable.

To this day, the Mosquito kit is still being produced by Estes, and modern-era model rocketeers consider it a sort of ‘right-of-passage’ to fly one of these diminutive birds and actually recover it afterwards.   I built three of them in my previous rocketry career, and yet another is on the docket for the post-2015 BAR era!  I should know better, but they are fun little rockets!

My second rocket was an Estes Starblazer – the older K-31 kit that was originally designed for ‘Short’ engines, then converted to fly on ‘Mini’ engines when those first came out. This one was a fun rocket to launch, but was eventually lost at the infamous Limon demo (read more about that later).

After a couple more small Estes kits, I got into building birds of my own design.  This was all driven by club competition, which became a major facet of my rocket building activity.  I’ve never counted, but I would wager that well over 60% of the model rockets I built between 1973 and 1983 were for competition purposes. The vast majority of them were custom designed.

It wasn’t long before I was trying out all aspects of model rocketry in addition to competition:  multi-staging, clustering, D-Engine models, aerial photography (Cineroc and AstroCam), boost/gliders, egg-lofting, helicopter recovery, sci-fi models, and even a couple of scale birds.  The two most prominent of these were both Centuri Engineering kits: an IQSY tomahawk and an Apollo Little Joe II.

I also began ordering and building kits from rocket manufacturers other than Estes – namely MPC (Model Products Corporation), CMR (Competition Model Rockets), and MRI.  Strangely enough, I never built or owned a rocket from Flight Systems, Inc. (FSI).  This company was known for its higher powered E and F class engines and kits.  Other members of the Skywatchers club flew these, and they were very impressive models and engines!

I think my all-time favorite model in the collection was an MPC kit – the Lunar Patrol.  This interesting bird consisted of a core booster that carried two detachable delta-wing gliders. Once these were trimmed for efficient glide, the model was very fun to watch – the entire model boosting straight and high, the gliders detaching at ejection, and the booster wafting down on its parachute, while the gliders wheeled around overhead.  Actually, the original booster was destroyed on its first launch attempt by a defective engine, so I re-designed a replacement version that was flown several times.  I wish I still had that rocket.  A plan to build a BAR clone of the Lunar Patrol is definitely on the upcoming schedule.

There were a couple of other model rockets in the old collection that stand out as being some of my favorites to fly.

Remember the Mosquito?  Prompted by a contest event called Maxi-Scale, I ended up building a 3X sized version of the little bird.  Maxi-Scale was where one would take an existing rocket kit and build a larger ‘scale’ rendition of it.

Powered by a mighty D engine, the ‘Skeeter Eeter’ would scream skyward to a very respectable altitude, and come down on a streamer.  The first version of a Skeeter Eeter was lost at the Limon Demo, so a second was later built, this one using standard 18mm engines.  Even on lower impulse power, it was still a very impressive performer.

Another of my favorite models was the Estes A-20 Demon, a kit model designed to fly on a D engine as well. The Demon was a very attractive rocket which never failed to turn in an impressive flight.

Stay tuned for Part 2......