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ShortFuse

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Seriously, I am rediscovering rocketry in my 50s. Back in the 1960s I was seriously committed to this hobby. I've never forgotten how much fun it was, so the other day I joined our local club (https://www.sargrocket.org), went to the hobby store and bought all the stuff I'll need to build and launch rockets, and I am currently working on a 3-stage Estes rocket that will be seriously nice, AND I've also started on a Semroc Orbital Transporter. The Orbital Transporter was one of my great, great favorites as a kid.

So hello everybody, and forgive me if I violate many, most or all of the customs and taboos of the Rocket People as I blunder through unfamiliar territory.
 
Welcome back to the Hobby! The folks I've met from SARG are a good people. (And I like to think that most of us here on TRF are good people, too.)

:)
 
Welcome to the forum, your thread title shows that you may very well fit into our special kind of sanity. Soon you will know all about the llamas, packing gnomes, delay gremlins, etc. etc. and a greater understanding of the whole will be yours.
 
Welcome to the forum, your thread title shows that you may very well fit into our special kind of sanity. Soon you will know all about the llamas, packing gnomes, delay gremlins, etc. etc. and a greater understanding of the whole will be yours.
Welcome to TRF! Great bunch 'o' folks here you can trust with your life and big secrets. Like S1 didn't divulge the ultrauber secret World Domination Machine planned to convert the general populace into rocketeers, and I appreciate that. That's why i trust these guys....
 
Hi :)

Avoid the topics of religeon and politics and it's all good. Too many arguments that are counterproductive and have totally nothing to do with rockets. We've had discussions on NASA that have degraded even with trying to not make it political...it just kinda happens.

Build rockets, ask any question you want, after a bit of searching :) Some get annoyed at the number of times someone asks how to paint or wood glue vs epoxy but for the most part we're here to help...for the most part ;)
 
Thanks fellas. Fortunately I am quite good at compartmentalizing my various interests (some would say obsessions). I will not even once bore the Rocket People with my opinions concerning the Reformation and 16th/17th century warfare (my wife is a therapist and she will sometimes say, as if talking to a three-year-old, "why is it interesting to you to read about the Siege of Malta?" My answer is generally along the lines of "Well, duh?").

Anyway, the strangest thing about all this is that the experience of the actual building of the rockets is as if I never stopped doing it some 45 years ago. I enjoyed shaping, filling and smoothing the balsa parts then, and I do now. And back then the launching was almost beside the point. Building the things was the main event for me. Launching them was just proof that they worked. Highly gratifying. I knew one kid who enjoyed launching them sideways so that they rammed into things. He would slap together Big Berthas and launch them right at an old shed that sat in the field where we frequently launched. I never understood that one at all. I used to HATE it when they would get damaged at all. I imagine I'll be even worse about that now, but never mind.

Back then we used to use a car battery to set these off. There was actually a device made by Estes or Centuri that was designed to do just that. I have yet to find one of those. Is it because small modern batteries are that much more reliable?
 
Welcome back and welcome to TRF!!!

You find there a lot more things Rocket out there than simply Estes these days!

Launch controllers are still relative to some of the old ones, I had a Centuri launch stand that actually had a 6v battery in the design and sat right under the blast deflector, but that was late 70's...

Now you will find 12v systems that can connect to car batteries, a lot of local groups and some really nice set up's with interlock safety systems built in as well.
 
I seem to remember in about 1966 or 67 we bought a launcher that sat on a big, red, square, plastic base that was FULL of old leaky D batteries. it had two short wires with alligator clips that came out from under the blast deflector and a remote button attached by a long wire. That thing didn't work as well as we had hoped. It was, in fact, highly unpredictable. My Dad actually bought for me, for my birthday that same year, a big, thick, plastic box designed to hold a car battery AND a car battery to go with it. The box had handles and little doors that allowed access to the positive and negative terminals. I believe its designed purpose was to use with those little electric fishing boat motors. There was also an Estes launcher control designed to work with a car battery. We never had a bad launch after that. I bought a bunch of fuses once, but I'm not sure we ever even tried those.

At any rate, TODAY I received my Semroc Orbital Transport and it is really, really nice. I bought two of them on the assumption that I am probably going to mess up something.

Next on the assembly line: https://www.semroc.com/Store/scripts/RocketKits.asp?SKU=KV-38 and https://www.semroc.com/Store/scripts/RocketKits.asp?SKU=XCE-KC17
 
welcome back! i know quite a few people that still use car batteries to launch. I agree with you 100%, i LOVE building the rockets, especially scratch build, it's not very often that i build kits. It's an amazing thing to design your rocket and then slowly watch it come to life by your hands and then watch it successfully (most times ;) )launch. I cringe whenever one of my rocket's parachutes don't open or something goes wrong...i love designing new parts to combat problems and then when something does go wrong i love fixing it and then figuring out how to prevent it from happening again.
 
I seem to remember in about 1966 or 67 we bought a launcher that sat on a big, red, square, plastic base that was FULL of old leaky D batteries. it had two short wires with alligator clips that came out from under the blast deflector and a remote button attached by a long wire...

That would be an Electro Launch. I also had one in 1967, when I was 10 years old.

Welcome to The Rocketry Forum; a bunch of adults acting like they're still 10 years old.

70est102.jpg
 
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Says the guy with the Buddy Christ avatar!

I'm rather proud of that avatar, I cut it from the ad myself. It's actually a Coca-Cola ad. It got me kicked from a no religeon/politics forum once but where I first started useing it was when I was a member of the Mechwarrior Leagues. I was smurffing in a server as Geebus, the Simpson's adulteration of the name, when I got invited to a team and wanted an avatar. I've used it ever since. I kinda thought I'd get in trouble here with it, there are a few Pastors here, but the only thing I get is PM's from people thinking it's funny :) One day I'm going to have to put up a photo of me. Dye my hair brown and you'd be suprised how much I look like that picture ;)
 
It doesn't seem that I am able to upload an avatar. Does that privilege kick in at a certain number of posts?
 
Ha ha. That is it. It's always so much fun to see the pictures of ads from back then, and I'm not talking about laughing at them. It was really great stuff, and I have so many great memories. I'm sure you know about this, but in case not, there's a guy who has scanned in entire Estes and Centuri catalogues from many, many years ago.

Here's the basic webpage. It's pretty a old website, but this is what got me thinking about getting into the rockets again when I stumbled across it: https://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/rockets.html

Scroll down to where it says, "BAR memories: Model rocket catalogs and stuff"
There are lots of links to the old catalogues from the 60s and 70s.

Here's the oldest he has scanned in: https://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/catalogs/estes60/60estcat.html

Here's another guy who has revisited his youth in a large scale way: https://galaxyphoto.com/rockets/otrans4x.html
 
Be sure to come out to the next SARG rocket launch on March 9th. The details, map, etc. should be on the SARG website (www.sargrocket.org).

There are quite a few SARG club members here on TRF and we have a "small but not-very-active" group here too. Click the "Community" tab under the masthead and select "Groups" from the drop down menu. Then locate SARG. Request admission to the group and I will hook you up.

Hope to see you out on the range.
 
Welcome to TRF and back to rocketry :) caution! The rocketry bug bites extra hard the second time around... :)
 
Welcome to the forum, your thread title shows that you may very well fit into our special kind of sanity. Soon you will know all about the llamas, packing gnomes, delay gremlins, etc. etc. and a greater understanding of the whole will be yours.

Don't forget the time-warp capabilities of Semroc's shipping department! ;)
 
when it absolutly positively must get there the day before yesterday! :)
rex
 
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