Back In The Day, Part 21 - ROMAR in 1974. 'Twas A Very Good Year.

ROMAR's first year as a section of the National Association of Rocketry was a very busy one.

One of the major watershed events early in the year was the occasion on which NAR pioneer Bill Roe stopped by one of the club sport launches and made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

Bill ended up donating the complete set of range equipment that had been used by the then-defunct Peak City Section....
 
The whole kit & Kaboodle...

Launch Racks, launch control panel, PA system, tracking station phones, tracking scopes, and even a tall flag pole!

ROMAR made good use of this equipment for the first couple of years.  Eventually, the launch panel and PA were replaced by smaller, more compact units, but the launch racks were used well into the 1980s for most of the club's demo launches.  One of the tracking scopes was stolen right from the launch field during lunch break at a contest meet in early 1974.

I do not know whatever became of this equipment after ROMAR ceased to exist in 1984.  Presumably it is in storage at one of the ex-senior members' home.  I hope that it may come to light someday, as the items could very well be valuable as welcome historical additions to the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Armed with the new launch equipment, the club members spent one weekend fixing up the launch field.  A local construction company graciously graded an access road from Airport Road to the designated launch site.  The club rented a trencher and was able to lay in permanent phone lines to the tracking station locations.  We also installed some posts marking the perimeter of the launch area.

ROMAR's very first NAR contest was a Section meet held on March 24, 1974.  The events were (in the old event parlance) Mercury Dual Eggloft, Hawk (C) Boost/Glide, Peewee Payload, and Class III (C) Streamer Duration. The event roster was fairly aggressive for a new section, but the meet went very well.

On April 21st, 1974, ROMAR hosted an NAR sanctioned Open meet, attended by members from the Pueblo Association of Rocketry, led by Lloyd Armstrong, and a couple of independent NAR members that drove down from Aurora, Colorado.  The same events as the section meet described above were flown.

Aside, from other regular sport launches, 1974 was also the year when ROMAR began doing some serious demonstration launches in and around Colorado Springs. One of these events became the first in an annual series of demos spanning the entirety of Skywatchers/ROMAR's existence.  I will describe these in an upcoming post.

Unfortunately, I have no photos in my archives of those earliest days of ROMAR, save one unclear shot of the Open meet published in the Cosmic SteppingStone news letter.  The photo doesn't show much, so I won't even attempt to reproduce it here.

Next post: Skywatchers in 1975-1978.