BAR Fleet No. 130 - Orbital Transport

Model Name: Orbital Transport

Model Type: Futuristic 

Scratch build version Estes Industries kit no.  K-42 / 1242.  Designed by Wayne Kellner.

Motor Type: 18mm

Booster Length:  58.8cm (23.15 in.)

Booster Diameter:  24.8mm

Booster Weight:  42.5g (1.50 oz.)

Orbiter Length:  22cm  (8.66 in.)

Orbiter Diameter: 18.7mm

Orbiter Wingspan:  13.2cm ( 5.2 in.)

Orbiter Weight:  15.0g  (.53 oz.)

Overall Vehicle weight:  57.5g (2.03 oz.)

Color scheme: white, gray, black, and silver with red, black, and yellow trim.

Completion date: March 31, 2021

A Must-Have Model In Every Fleet

The Estes Orbital Transport is one of those iconic model rockets that every rocketeer should own.  It just has 'that look' - attractive lines, proportions, and decor - that is plain irresistible.  The first time I ever laid eyes on one was in 1969 at NARAM-11.  The bird was proudly displayed at  Estes Industries' vendor booth.  I was smitten!  To a thirteen year old kid, that thing was the coolest rocket ever!

I ended up building one in 1975 during my Old Fleet days.

 It doesn't need to be said that an Orbital Transport is a requirement for inclusion in the new BlastFromThePast BAR fleet.

The JimZ website provided the instructions, patterns, and decal scans to make a clone build possible.

This OT build was actually a long time in realizing completion.  The many fins were cut out way back in early 2018 before the project was shelved while other models were built. They were done the old school way - tracing the paper patterns onto balsa sheets and engaging in LOTS of cutting with an X-Acto knife.

No laser-cut fins to be found here....

When it came time to begin painting the model, I quickly made the determination that I would not go with the usual all-white color scheme.  I just didn't want my Orbital Transport to look like every other Orbital Transport on the planet!

I arrived at a painting plan that called for the upper half of the booster fuselage to be white, with a medium gray color for the lower half.  It should be noted that the gray portion was brush-painted with hobby acrylic paint. Black trim lines separate the two colors, and these extend to the edges of all fins.  The protruding sections of the booster ram jet tubes are hand-painted silver.

To round things out, the booster nose was given a black tip to make it look a bit more Space Shuttle-esque.

For the Orbiter, I chose to paint the bottoms of the wings black.  Again, this and the black tip on the nose give it an appearance more akin to the Space Shuttle. Lastly, the Orbiter engine nozzle was painted silver.

Overall, this was a very pleasing project to work on, not to mention being the most challenging build to date in my BAR era.

Back In The Day, Part 38 - The Cosmic Steppingstone Newsletter.

 When the Rocky Mountain Association of Rocketry / Skywatchers rocket club made its debut as a section of the NAR in 1974, one of the first orders of business was to establish a news letter.

I was a senior in high school at the time, and was taking advanced English and creative writing classes. In addition, I was taking a mechanical drafting class.  Naturally, I was elected as the first editor of the club newsletter, The Cosmic SteppingStone. 

 In subsequent years, the editor was elected along with the other club officers for a one year term.  Besides myself, editorial duties were handled by club members Marc Kramer, Lester Coburn, Glade Gordon, and Brian Fox.

The masthead of the premier issuecarried a drawing of a circular space station, very crudely drawn as there was a  huge rush to get the publication worked up and printed.

By the time issue #2 came around, I had more time to sit down and draw up a much better rendition of the station.

Like most club newsletters of the time, the CSS carried the usual things such as event calendars, editorials, meet reports, general club news, cartoons, rocketry tips and techniques, and the occasional rocket plan submitted by a club member.

The club's printing process wasn't exactly the greatest, so any attempt to include photographs was a dismal failure.

These were also the days before the advent of personal computers and word processing software.  For many years the newsletter was laboriously pounded out on a mechanical typewriter, usually by a late-night, bleary-eyed, caffeine-laden editor.

At one point in the mid 1970's, printing was done on one of those old hand cranked, purple-inked mimeograph machines that one of the club members had obtained on the cheap. 

By 1978, publication process was pared down to a two or three page affair with no masthead other than the type-written newsletter name and issue date.  

No newsletters at all were published from late 1978 through all of 1981.  This three year hiatus was the period when the club was down to five members and activity was at an all-time low.

Things changed big time in 1980.

The NAR presence in the Mountain States region enjoyed a huge resurgence. The HOTROC regional contests were in full swing, and ROMAR re-chartered as a section.

The Cosmic Steppingstone was re-born in a much slicker format.  As the premier editor of the new order of things, I re-designed a new mast-head and began including full front page illustrations.

Huge improvements were made in newsletter layout, regular features and articles were graced with graphics and clip art.  For the first time, the club's printing process was adequate enough to reproduce photographs with a bit better quality.  Submitted rocket plans were also very professionally drafted. In those days, there was a lot of real paper cut and paste work done, as well as hand drawing column separation lines. It was way more work than what we can do today with modern computer publishing apps.!

A Sample page of the CSS 'New Look'

In the last years of the Cosmic Steppinstone's publication, we enjoyed a healthy newsletter exchange with many of the well-known NAR sections around the country.

I still have all of my original copies of the newsletter, which I enjoy taking out once in awhile to spend an evening re-reading and reminiscing about the 'goodle days' of ROMAR / Skywatchers.  

Even more importantly, these old documents have proven a very valuable resource for digging up information for this blog series on the history of ROMAR!

Cheers!

Back In The Day, Part 37 - The Citadel Mall Rocketry Display

 In 1979, the Skywatchers Model Rocket Club of Colorado Springs set up our largest indoor static display ever in the city's premier shopping mall, The Citadel. 

This event was actually my brain-child.   I had worked for a couple of years on the maintenance crew at the mall, so I was well acquainted with all the folks in management.  I floated the idea to them of allowing the Skywatchers rocket club to set up a well-publicized display in the main hub of the center.  The mall management went one step better and suggested expanding the event into a mall-wide hobby show extending over an entire weekend! Of course, I didn't hesitate to volunteer to contact the various hobby clubs around town and get the whole event organized.  The mall manager would schedule the date and take care of advertising and press releases in the local newspapers.

There was a lot of work to be done in the intervening weeks.  The club set to work designing and building the display boards and table layout. I began calling the various hobby clubs around town.

When all was said and done, I ended up with several organizations who committed to participating in the event:  an R/C model airplane club, an R/C model boat club, an R/C car group, a miniature military replica club, the local coin collectors' club, and even a couple of local artists.  Sadly, the nearby model railroaders declined to join us, citing the difficulty of setting up a working rail layout in time for the show.

Here is a hand-drawn flier I put together, made copies, and posted in all of the Springs hobby shops:  

Following are some pictures I took at the event:

A table showcasing some of the members' sport model rockets.

Club president Glade Gordon at the scale model display 

showing off a Saturn V to some interested visitors.

A display table with posters explaining all about model rockets, how they work, 

and an introduction to our club and the NAR.

A table showing the technical aspects of model rocketry.  Included in the display 

were a Cineroc movie camera and an Estes TransRoc transmitter.

A display showcasing the various aspects of competition model rocketry.

The show turned out to be a great success, drawing considerable crowds throughout the weekend.  All club members were on deck to man the displays and hand out club promotional material. As a result, the Skywatchers club enjoyed a decent surge of interest in club membership soon after. 

Most of all, it was highly enjoyable opportunity to show off and talk about our great hobby to a lot of folks who were unfamiliar with model rocketry.

Back In The Day, Part 36 - HOTROC-3

 The Third Annual Heart Of The Rockies regional contest meet was held in Colorado Springs over the weekend of August 21-22, 1982.

The meet was attended by 20 contestants from around the Mountain States with four NAR sections being represented: ROMAR (Colorado Springs), WARP (Utah) COSMIC (Denver), and KOSMO (Kansas).

The location of the meet had change slightly, as the field on which previous HOTROCs had been flown was purchased for development earlier in the year.  A new field was found on Fountain Boulevard on the east side of the Springs.  

For the third year in a row, I served as CD.

Events scheduled for HOTROC-3 were mostly in the duration categories.  ROMAR did not have adequate tracking equipment on hand, or enough trained trackers in the club to effectively run altitude events.  The variety of events was quite challenging, nonetheless.

Flown at the meet were:

Class A Parachute Duration, Class 1/2A Boost/Glide, Class D Egg-loft Duration, Class D Super-Roc Duration, Class A Rocket/Glide, Class B Helicopter Duration, and Streamer Spot Landing.

A new 'fun' event was added this year:  Odd-Roc, which brought out a number of creative and amusing rocket-powered objects!

Unfortunately, I do not possess a lot of photographs from the meet, as sometime back in the late 80s, I lost my 1982 rocketry log book.  Most of the photos in this post are scanned from the 4th quarter 1982 issue of The Cosmic Steppingstone, ROMAR's newsletter. These images aren't the greatest, so bear with me....

First, a group shot of the HOTROC-4 contestants:

Back row: Glade Gordon, Bill Penberthy, Larry Goldman, Ed Mitton, Roy Black, Brian Fox, Randall Redd, and Gary Price.

Middle Row: Ken Tenaka, Steve Sande, Mike DeRosier, Kevin Knapp, and George Fox.

Kneeling:  Tadd Jensen, Brian Newberry, Tim Collins, Kirk Rafferty, and Dr. Warren Layfield.

Not pictured:  Mike Mitchell and Steve Hamous.

Here is a scan of the official programme for HOTROC-3:

Randall Redd and Gary Price of Utah set to launch one of Gary's birds:

Mike DeRosier, cleverly disguised as Groucho Marx, puts a serious spin on range safety check:

The Odd-Roc entries on display:

As expected, the variety of contraptions was interesting - a flying fish, a large Pennzoil can, an 'Atlas Holding the Earth' figure, a flying Rubik's Cube, a fire hydrant, a Kootie...the list goes on. Also on the display table were the meet champion trophies for which the contestants were vying, and a number of cakes that were later raffled off.

A contestant readies his "Furry, googly-eyed, flying saucer....thing... for flight:

Odd-Roc turned out to be the most popular event of the meet, with the contestants heartily clamoring for a repeat in HOTROC-4 the next year.

After the dust had settled,Overall Meet Champion Brian Fox hoists the big trophy:

As the contestants were packing up and readying to head home, there was already enthusiastic talk of next year.....

Back In The Day, Part 35 - A Little Bit Of Ancient Colorado Rocketry History

 It seems that every time I look through my archives of things saved from my early days of model rocketry, I re-discover another tidbit that I had overlooked or forgotten about

This time it is in the form of a Range Control Card used by the old Peak City Section of Colorado Springs. 

 For those of you who are familiar with early model rocketry history, you know that Peak City was the 2nd-ever NAR section in the United States.  Headed by William Roe, the group was formed in 1959 and was active until around the early 1970s.

This card clearly demonstrates that Peak City flew from a 12 launch point rack system.

Cheers!