NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 3 - The OddRoc Master Himself

While making another circuit of the meeting room floor early in the event, I came across one of the display tables on which some new items had appeared....

 

And I knew exactly who had put them there.

I approached the man standing near the table with his back toward me.

"Ahem", I said, "These strange rockets look like they just might be the work of Randall Redd!"

Randall turned and saw me.

A happy reunion ensued.

Randall had been one of the Utah rocketeers from the old WARP section that drove out to Colorado every August from 1980-1983 to participate in the HOTROC (Heart of the Rockies) regional meets hosted by ROMAR of Colorado Springs.

Randall and I kept up letter correspondence well up into the late 1980s, even though I had exited model rocketry by that time.  He and his wife, Cathy, stopped by my home to visit on any occasion they were passing through Colorado Springs while traveling on vacations.

I lost touch with Randall until I became a BAR in 2016.  I looked him up and got into contact with him again, and was delighted to learn that he was still flying model rockets out on the Salt Flats with the current NAR section in Salt Lake City, UROC.

When I learned about this reunion, I shot an email to Randall to see if he was coming out here to NARAM 60.  He replied that he was, and a short while later, I was again delighted to note that he and Cathy were registered for the re-union!  

This is a picture of Randall and Cathy at the reunion.  Randall is holding the front page of a Colorado Springs newspaper feature on HOTROC-2, published in August, 1981.  The full page cover photo shows Randall hooking up his Class C Egglofter for flight!  I had brought this along to present to him, knowing he would be tickled by it.

Here's a shot of Randall and me...

Randall has cited me as the inspiration for his getting interested in building and flying Oddrocs.

How did I earn that dubious distinction?

Being the CD of some of the HOTROC regionals, I had introduced and scheduled Oddroc as an unofficial contest event. It quickly became one of the more popular and anticipated features of the meets. Randall took hold of it and never looked back. We always looked forward to seeing what kind of new contraption Randall would bring along to fly every year at HOTROC!

He never disappointed!

NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 2 - An Old Rocket Buddy

I'm going to start this reunion series on a more personal note.

This is a picture of myself and one of my best friends who happened to travel out here from Virginia to attend the reunion - Mr. Marc Kramer.

 

(Special thanks to George Gassaway for taking the time out to shoot the above photo.)

Marc and I go back to 1968 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  He is actually the guy that got me into model rocketry.  In August of 1969 Marc invited me to go along with he and his dad to a model rocket event happening at the United States Air Force Academy. Marc was celebrating his 11th birthday, and a trip to this meet was one of his birthday gifts from his folks.

Turned out the event was NARAM - 11 !

We spent the entire afternoon there watching competition models and sport birds being launched into the blue Colorado Sky. 
Needless to say, I was hooked.

I didn't really get started into the hobby until 1973, so in the intervening four years, I was content with watching Marc fly his models.

Marc lived in the house right across the street from mine, so we pretty much hung out on a daily basis throughout our junior high and high school years.

I remember many evenings and weekends spent in Marc's basement workshop building model rockets and plotting about how we would soon become Masters of the Universe in parachute duration competition.

OK, we were both total nerds.....

Marc and I were both charter members of the Rocky Mountain Association of Rocketry in Colorado Springs (NAR section 331) in 1973, and spent many a Sunday morning over the following years flying rockets in the club's sport and contest meets.

Incidentally, Marc is the guy who introduced me to the first rocket of my fleet, an Estes Mini-Brute Hornet that was already built and on display at 'Custom Hobbies' hobby store in Colorado Springs. He suggested I buy the model to get my feet wet with rocket flying before I built one.
This Hornet is the very same model that I recently restored and is now my BAR-era fleet flagship. All of you who have been following this blog are quite familiar with this bird by now.

In the late 1970s, Marc and I went our own ways to pursue our various education and career endeavors.  We were out of touch for all of the intervening decades until Marc found this blog last year and established contact.  

Our meeting up here in Pueblo at the NAR reunion was first time we've seen each other in nearly 40 years!

And we're both still nerds!  But these days, of course, nerds are cool (at least according to the Internet).

So, here is an interesting aside that Marc brought to my attention...

This is the photo from the front cover of the October 1969 issue of Model Rocketry Magazine which carried coverage of NARAM-11.  The photo shows Mr. Doug Malewicki launching his R/C glider.

I would like to direct your attention to the two young lads in the near background observing the launch.

After much study and discussion, Marc and I are convinced that those two young men in the photo are us.  I was 13 and he was 11.  Our relative sizes, hair color and clothing 'styles' are dead on as well.

Nice to think that us two old buddies might be immortalized on the cover of MRm !

Cheers!










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NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 1 - Like A Kid In A Candy Store

Saturday, August 4th, 2018, I made the 80 mile trip from Castle Rock to Pueblo to attend a much anticipated event - the NAR 60 year anniversary Rocketeer Reunion.  Despite traffic delays on I-25 just south of Castle Rock because of the big Renaissance Festival at Larkspur, I made it to the Pueblo Convention Center by 4:30 p.m.

(A little aside - I was actually born in Pueblo in 1956, but was there for only a very brief period before being moved to Colorado Springs.  I have absolutely no memories of living in Pueblo, so I really claim to be a Springs native.)

After checking in at the door, I proceeded into the big room and found Pat Fitzpatrick, who showed me to the table where I could set up my small NARAM 11 ephemera display. By the time I had everything arranged, a lot of reunion attendees had arrived.

Another little bit of background about me. During the time I was involved in model rocketry back in the 70s and early 80s, I never got out to attend a single NARAM, or even any other large model rocketry event outside of Colorado.  The only NAR rocketeers I knew were those who were part of local NAR sections in Colorado and the rest of the mountain states, plus a handful of people who were employed at Estes Industries, or through a bit of letter correspondence with other NAR rocketeers outside of Colorado.

As a result, I had never before met any of the old-timer model rocketeers that would be here at the reunion this night.

The thing is, I knew ALL of their names! 

Because I had a nearly complete sets of Model Rocketry Magazine and The Model Rocketeer in my possession that I knew well cover to cover by virtue of reading them so many hundreds of times.

In effect, it blew my mind when I began circulating about the room and talking with all of these model rocketry hobby stalwarts that I knew only through the pages of magazines. 

Like a kid in a candy store.....

Anyway, this man's blog is going to be populated over the next couple of weeks with my personal observations of this wonderful event, complete with as many photos as I can cram in.

As I write this post this morning, I am still overwhelmed and euphoric over the event, so it's going to be a lot of fun sharing with the rest of you.

Please enjoy.....

An addendum - For those of you who were also in attendance at the re-union, please don't hesitate to post replies about your experiences here.  It would be fun to make this whole blog series into  a comprehensive archive of sorts about the event!