Sad day for Paper Rockets

akpilot said:

If you don't mind me asking a sincere question, who asked you to take them down and why would you do it off of an e-mail request? You personally weren't be threatened with legal action were you?

And why can't a simple banner be placed on the paperrockets page, claiming no responsibility if used outside of it's intended purpose?

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One requested to have this rockets removed because of publicized modifications and possible lawsuits. The other simply because of seeing Art's page.They can do that via email and I will comply if asked by the author. I haven't been threatened with legal action.

Thanks for answering. I was just wondering where this all came from and if the sources were reliable or if this is the case where the tail is wagging the dog.

BTW, Art has modified his sight and the paper rockets are back up. You have to accept the liability by a "button" and then you're back in.

All is not lost . . .

Also, not that disclaimers even hold water in court, you can add them to your plans / drawings if it makes you sleep better at night.

akpilot said:

Thanks for answering. I was just wondering where this all came from and if the sources were reliable or if this is the case where the tail is wagging the dog.

BTW, Art has modified his sight and the paper rockets are back up. You have to accept the liability by a "button" and then you're back in.

All is not lost . . .

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The button is similar to this:

https://christmastoryeye.ytmnd.com/

Shueedoo wap de waop wap a wee bop

Bip bop bip p bap blop be bop!

akpilot said:

[...]
BTW, Art has modified his sight and the paper rockets are back up. You have to accept the liability by a "button" and then you're back in.

All is not lost . . .

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Yes, most of them are back, but there are still some that are MIA. No more Micromaxx designs, except for the BIC rocket. Hmmmm....:hmpf:

Mark \\.

lessgravity wrote:
>>>>-->>>>
I would like to know what happened also. I woke up this morning with emails asking me to remove rocket plans and links.
<<<<--<<<<

akpilot replied:
>>>>>
If you don't mind me asking a sincere question, who asked you to take them down and why would you do it off of an e-mail request? You personally weren't be threatened with legal action were you?
<<<<<

I think that is a different thing. If the original designer of a plan asked ME for his plans or link to his own site to be removed from one of my web pages, I would certainly do so out of common courtesy.

Now, I would certainly want to know why, and in this sort of situation would hope he might be convinced to change his mind if it seemed he was over-reacting. But ultimately if a person did not want them to be posted on my site, I’d remove them.

So, I completely understand why “lessgravity” would remove plans he was asked to remove, regardless of why.

What I still do not understand is why the “stampede” occurred to begin with. Somebody got scared enough to yank plans for whatever reasons (even if the reasons were self-scared worrying), then it rippled from there by people who otherwise never worried about it but figured if Chicken Little was scared that the sky was falling, they should be just as scared and do the same.

- George Gassaway

lessgravity said:

OK - The sites are back.

Art has put his page back with a notice.

I have put my site back up minus a few rockets that authors have requested removed.

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Neither of those links work. Here are corrected versions:

Art Applewhite's free stuff with clickable disclaimer
Ultimate Paper Rocket Guide

(Your link to Art Applewhite's page has an extra "https://" at the front. Your link to your own page has an extra "the-".)

I for one am glad to see these sites back, hard to believe that this has played out , scaring people into taking off fun and friendly free designs pages that Kids and myself enjoy. We have enought attacks on rocketry to last a life time.

LET the PAPER FLY!

Did someone actually get hurt in real life? Or is this all a "just in case" thing?

Gym_Class_Hero said:

Did someone actually get hurt in real life? Is the ATF getting involved in MPR/LPR now?

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I don't see how. Paper rockets are made of... paper. When they crash they tend to just go squish. Most of them are so light that they don't even require a recovery system (some tumble some use nose blow recovery).

Um, I cannot speak for Art, but I did encourage him to re-establish his FREE paper rocket page. We had a nice talk about all of this.

And YES it *IS* (now) re-established. (Just click the "I accept" link after reading his liability statement immediately above the link.)

I hope those that removed their paper rocket pages based on Art removing his page AND have not yet decided to re-establish them, will now be encouraged to do so.

Very best regards;

Bob Finch
NAR # 12965

I've never felt akin to model rocketry, or actually accepted by your, and yes it is a small community. My paper model designs go out al the planet, and for every model rocket download, there is as many as 100 downloads for my their static type models.
I have actually gotten hurt. almost, or even everyone posting thus far is a user, and not a designer. How many of you have to read hate mail about what some IDIOT did with a paper rocket, thinking that they knew more than the designer, only to have things happen like:
...The )&(&&^ thing came down in my pasture and caused the cows to stampede and kill a calf.
... JAH ok, I know you only offer it up as a model, but the guy that made built it sent it straight onto my roof, and it's clogging the gutter. I have no way to get up there!
...Or my personal favorite of all time.... YOU'RE SICK! Your scuds being offered out there are the most evel ting I can imagine and you're encouraging children to build models of weapons of mass destruction!
Now that last one I was proud of, and even typed back- &^)& RIGHT!!!!!!!
.....As for the rest.
Look, I'm not a company, and won't try to speak for anyone else. I'm just a dood with a few ideas about how to shape pieces of paper and fun with them. That's all! I get my share of hate mail, and until the last couple of days, it outnumbered the positive mails 2-1! The worst ones are from people who think they know more than I do, and re-design/size my models into some Frankenstein creation, and then type me wanting to know how to make them work after failures. HA-HA-HA!!!!!
Then there's the folks who write to tell me that my designs are a good start, but they can do better, and I should ask 'them' for help! After seeing what they have posted, and know, how about if I just shortcut things and hand a monkey a Machine Gun in the middle of Washington D.C.?
It hurts getting these kinds of mails, to the point where I delete my own addresses just to stop them.
I'm not a company! I don't have insurance for lawsuits or otherwise. I'm just a guy with a few, what I think are neat ideas/designs. If someone sues me, I take the full hit! I have to take time out of my life to pay the bus fare, go to a court, just to spend maybe 10 seconds in front of a judge to tell him, "HEY JUDGE! You can't fix stupid!" Do I get any of that time/money back NO!!!!
MY biggest...fans/clients whatever- are not model rocket folk! Just good old average folks across the world, who can't get plastic models and like paper art.
As such, they will now come first.
So, while I'm glad model rocketry will keep it's online paper toys- You ALL better darn well think about what you're doing with them, and police/support each other in their proper use... or you may find yourselves with a bit less in the future.... Laugh/POO-POO now, for it may not be so funny in the future, and while this is my last post on TRF, there is a future for your hobby! ...and the future, is coming fast!
Good luck to you all, and I may/will be designing things that the smarter of you may/will be able to fly.
AX'E- aka Eric Truax....signing off and out........................

Well Eric,

I sure do hope you reconsider and come back here once in a while.

As to the idiots who sent you those emails, it is just another vivid example that the world is full of (over-flowing with?) idiots. You just can't kill yourself trying to make all of them happy. Most of them, you'll NEVER make happy. Many of them are just wanting to show off and you got in the way. Ignore all of them!

You have given everyone a great website with lots of entertainment potential. I very much appreciate all the effort you have put into sharing an interesting assortment of paper models, done to consistently high quality, and with useful instructions and tips as well. Thank you for all your work, and I hope you continue this in the future.

You just can't waste time worrying about someone who doesn't understand enough of what they're doing to be able to scale things up or down, or to convert models to usable model rockets. (Same thing said more briefly: You just can't fix stupid.) You do what you can.

Again, thanks for posting all those cool paper models!

Wow, I didn't know you guys got that much hate mail. Does rocketry really have this bad of a reputation to the general sheep...whoops...I mean public?

I have been a fan of Eric Truax's cardmodeling and paper rocket designs for a long time. His Patriot missile paper rocket is absolutely one of my best fliers and is one of my favorite rockets in my fleet. I'm still launching the first one that I built three (or is it four?) years ago, and I even downscaled his design to make a Micromaxx version (which is also a great flier). I don't know any serious rocketeer who would send emails off that were filled with the kind of crap that he has gotten and which he quoted in his post; real rocketeers take responsibility for their own builds and their own flights, regardless of whether they are using their own designs or someone else's. If a design is seriously flawed, a real rocketry hobbyist would provide the designer or company with some detailed feedback that included a description, and maybe an analysis, of what specifically was wrong with the design, and would often have some suggestions for improvement. I can't believe that someone actually sent Eric an invective-filled email blaming him because their rocket landed on the roof! How could anyone take such an email seriously? Any nutjob with a computer can access the email links posted on web pages and flood the designer's inbox with bull, and I'm sure that there are a some sickos out there that get some kind of kick by doing just that, too. But I doubt that such people would have enough intelligence to even print out and build the designs, let alone fly them. I don't doubt for a second, though, that repeatedly getting such crap can eventually wear down even the most resilient person.

Still no sign of Art's Micromaxx designs on his "Free Stuff" page, other than the Bic Stick rocket. I do see that he has new versions of almost all of the designs that he has posted, though. Maybe he pulled the MMX designs because he is revising them?

Mark \\.

Eric says he not a rocket guy? But from what I know, from building his models..... he knows his rockets.
Hopefully he will come back to TRF regularly at some point, he certainly has knowledge worth sharing.

We need to police ourselves... absolutely. I think for the most part we (the rocket folks) do this fairly well.

The problems are with the non-rocket, occasional rocket, and dumb-bleep communities that don't do any thing safe anyway.
There are plenty of people who would use model rockets and not be part of the community.

Just like some people use Baseball bats to beat people up.... baseball players are not at fault.


Gym_Class_Hero: “I didn't know you guys got that much hate mail.”

Well my young friend, I'll let you in on a secret.... there are lots of coooks out there!

There are lots of people who have nothing but time on their hands to send obnoxious e-mail.
Lets see what do I have this week in the e-mail folder that I can share with out getting sued?

-Frivolous law suit pending.

-You *expletive* (death threat) you should go on trial for war crimes.... bla bla bla....
I get a few of these every month. I have to e-mail them back that I am NOT! GENERAL David Mckiernan, I am Mechanic David Mackiernan.

In the past I also changed my nice logo from a beautiful full color representation of the “Skull and Rockets” to a black and white silhouette. The rockets behind the skull are SCUDS. I got more than a few e-mails about “promoting weapons of mass destruction”. Today I'm wondering if it was the same nit-wits who e-mailed EricTr'x?
I still like the old logo. (theres' personal history in that)

So yes I'm certain if little old me gets clogged up with stupidity e-mail I know I'm not the only one.


One of the best things about the Rocketry Hobby is that the inelegance level of participants is generally higher than average.



.

If you post an email address online, and you provide something, plans, opinions, anything, you will get hatemail. There are millions and millions of people online, and someone is going to be pissed off that you even exist. A friend of mine gets hatemail and death threats regularly.

Gym_Class_Hero said:

Did someone actually get hurt in real life? Or is this all a "just in case" thing?

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As far as I know... the correct answer is NO, no one actually "got hurt".

HOWEVER... Art did/does have a good reason for doing the things he did, including re-establishing his freebie page with a disclaimer agreement.

powderburner said:

Well Eric,

I sure do hope you reconsider and come back here once in a while.

As to the idiots who sent you those emails, it is just another vivid example that the world is full of (over-flowing with?) idiots. You just can't kill yourself trying to make all of them happy. Most of them, you'll NEVER make happy. Many of them are just wanting to show off and you got in the way. Ignore all of them!

You have given everyone a great website with lots of entertainment potential. I very much appreciate all the effort you have put into sharing an interesting assortment of paper models, done to consistently high quality, and with useful instructions and tips as well. Thank you for all your work, and I hope you continue this in the future.

You just can't waste time worrying about someone who doesn't understand enough of what they're doing to be able to scale things up or down, or to convert models to usable model rockets. (Same thing said more briefly: You just can't fix stupid.) You do what you can.

Again, thanks for posting all those cool paper models!

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This is well said. I do not know what to add.

Thank you Eric, for designing some cool paper rockets. The sport models are really fun to fly and the scale models are quite detailed. Thanks for all the work.

Regards,
Mike

Nerull said:

If you post an email address online, and you provide something, plans, opinions, anything, you will get hatemail. There are millions and millions of people online, and someone is going to be pissed off that you even exist. A friend of mine gets hatemail and death threats regularly.

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"They're trying to kill us! It's a new experience for me."

"Happens to me all the time."