Dude Perfect + HPR

Dude Perfect is playing with rockets again. I love watching these videos on Saturday mornings with my kids. Hopefully this is good PR for our hobby. If nothing else, it's a good advertisement for the Wilson FX system.

I think it’s generally positive. I wish they hadn’t injected the competition of catching the rocket. Although I don’t think they meant it seriously, it might lead inexperienced people to try to catch their own rockets, which is specifically prohibited by the Safety Codes.

Cue the "OMG THIS IS TERRIBLE FOR THE HOBBY NAYSAYERS" in 3....2....1....

DAllen said:

Cue the "OMG THIS IS TERRIBLE FOR THE HOBBY NAYSAYERS" in 3....2....1....

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I thought the same thing when I posted it. But I just read the comments on YouTube. It seems like everyone loves it. That can't be bad for our hobby.

Nice Cato on rocket 2.

Steve Shannon said:

I think it’s generally positive. I wish they hadn’t injected the competition of catching the rocket. Although I don’t think they meant it seriously, it might lead inexperienced people to try to catch their own rockets, which is specifically prohibited by the Safety Codes.

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Concur with that. How many folks do we have to correct at launches every year? Good thing most are kids.

Well, call me a buzzkill but I just can't stand some of this kind of crap on Youtube nowadays. These super hyper over the top hosts drive me nuts. They make me want to load up a 50 cal with a chain of tranquilizer darts and pull the trigger until the targets stop moving.

However, antics aside, I do like the fact that they appear to be doing things in a rather safe and controlled environment. Not sure if they are far enough back for TRA regs but they are behind a nice plywood wall. They're launching pretty much in a straight up manner and aren't purposely trying to destroy their rockets by launching at a shallow angle or something stupid like that with some sort of recovery. They're also using what look to be well built and designed rockets that are stable. It could be worse - like a trying to fly a snowmobile.

cwbullet said:

Nice Cato on rocket 2.

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There was a statement by (iirc) Loc Precision on FB that the CATO was in fact a Hollywood stunt aka professional demo/pyro guys and not a real CATO. The rockets were actually assembled by Loc too.They even had a COA for the filming.

Steve Shannon said:

I think it’s generally positive. I wish they hadn’t injected the competition of catching the rocket. Although I don’t think they meant it seriously, it might lead inexperienced people to try to catch their own rockets, which is specifically prohibited by the Safety Codes.

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Not the Model Rocket Safety Code. Only the High Power Rocket Safety Code.

That's what happens when they label giant rockets "Model Rockets".

Go on the video and post up some of your favorite HPR flights in the comments. Get people excited to see some big flights.

rharshberger said:

There was a statement by (iirc) Loc Precision on FB that the CATO was in fact a Hollywood stunt aka professional demo/pyro guys and not a real CATO. The rockets were actually assembled by Loc too.They even had a COA for the filming.

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Aaaaahhhh...that explains that. I thought that looked a little weird.

rharshberger said:

There was a statement by (iirc) Loc Precision on FB that the CATO was in fact a Hollywood stunt aka professional demo/pyro guys and not a real CATO. The rockets were actually assembled by Loc too.They even had a COA for the filming.

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Disappointing that they didn't build the rockets themselves. One guy even said this time he actually followed the instructions. Hmph...

One thing I thought was odd was that the four motors that flew all appeared to be wildly different impulse. If they faked a CATO, then it's probably not an honest competition, but it still seems odd to have such a wide range of altitudes.

I cringed a bit at the catch a rocket section, but that's relatively minor.

I thought it was just dumb, someone made their rockets, they painted them, and then paid a guy to blow one up, it's just hype entertainment, other than exposing people to the fact that there are in fact larger rockets, I don't know what positive image this shows or encourages....but people love stuff blowing up and people running around screaming so maybe it will work......

I'm ambivalent about the Dude Perfect guys. I think its good publicity (someone said there's no such thing as bad publicity), but there's a lot of negatives too. When the Hunger Games came out, there was a huge rush of kids running out to archery ranges (another hobby of mine). Those kids had hugely unrealistic expectations for how well they would be able to shoot their first time and didn't understand the amount of practice required to become "Katniss". I see the same problem here. These guys didn't build the rockets, didn't put in the hours to learn the construction techniques, and ended up with sparkling, perfectly painted rockets in a few minutes, ready to launch.

Their "deplorable, excessive personality (to quote John Hammond)", would seem to appeal to people without the patience for long hours of build work. This just seems like the Kim Kardashian version of High Power Rocketry.

It all being faked didn't bother me.
They ran off the deer bothered me.
I was there, watching from a safe 400 yards away sitting in a comfy chair on the deck.

M

I would have to disagree with you there, for this reason. The purpose of this video was not education, rocketry, or even simulation. It was for entertainment, plain and simple. Comparing an entertainer, let alone a youtube one, to a rocket enthusiast is like comparing Sylvester Stallone to a green beret...they appear the same at times, but there are marked differences, and in the end, one is just for show, the other...for life.

If this causes a single person to grab a rocket next time they're at Hobby Lobby and put the biggest motor they can find in it, I'll say that's probably a win.

dhbarr said:

If this causes a single person to grab a rocket next time they're at Hobby Lobby and put the biggest motor they can find in it, I'll say that's probably a win.

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Unless they do something stupid with it that causes the government to take notice. I live in California where the state government has decided straws are too dangerous for the average joe to get without a permit, so I may be hypersensitive.

jmuck78 said:

Unless they do something stupid with it that causes the government to take notice. I live in California where the state government has decided straws are too dangerous for the average joe to get without a permit, so I may be hypersensitive.

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As someone who used to love Portland, I thoroughly understand the fear about California ruining things by turning them into more California.

Fun video, although hammed up and staged.

Say what you will, they got some of the right people to help them do it properly. (I dislike their pretense of building them though)

If folks see non-troll comments that seem to express genuine interest, why not reply with a link to NAR/Tripoli?

Nytrunner said:

Say what you will, they got some of the right people to help them do it properly. (I dislike their pretense of building them though)

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Good point - LOC knows what they are doing. It did strike me though, when the "dudes" were showing the rockets from the first challenge, and they just threw them on the ground. I was thinking, "what a waste of a rocket"!

The true waste was that blown up rocket. Looked like a LOC TopGun bash. And was the failed Mooove Over a purposeful recovery failure?

And now I wonder if they even built the first ones themselves. That was a niiiiice looking Jayhawk.....

I guess from the visceral "BIG STUFF GO BOOM!" juvenile dudebro YouTube point of view this is a hit.

Let's glance over the myriad safety and ethical concerns this whole thing elucidates.

Sure it could get people interested in rocketry. My cynical nature envisions most potential enthusiasts going this route though:

1) "Wow that's huge and awesome, how do I get into that?"
2) "Start with this tiny paper and plastic Estes Athena and launch it on an A motor."
3) "Dude that kind of sucks."
4) Fini.

Juvenile dudebro YouTube culture doesn't want to begin at the beginning. They just want to make BIG STUFF GO BOOM!.

Thankfully there are at least a handful of reasonable, intelligent kids who get this whole thing and pursue it in a realistic fashion.

I think more than anything I'm irritated by the fact that this was an alleged "altitude competition" yet anyone with basic knowledge of the craft would easily know what rockets would go to what altitude on what motors. These dudebros didn't even touch on any of that. They could have predicted this riddle on paper with math and physics and compared it to actual experimental results but ignored all that for the big assplosions because predictive ability is for dorks. God forbid we help teach the importance of math and physics in the realm of reality or encourage anyone to learn anything.

My only issue with it was the lack of emphasis on safety, such as trying to catch rockets even when they are falling back to earth like a bullet. It's awesome to see them get into the hobby but there's a lot of missing details.

First off, I think it's AWESOME!
It's so cool that the hobby is being promoted.

However, it may not shine our hobby in the best light.
Trying to catch rockets is bad, and against the safety code. But, it's even worse to do it when a rocket doesn't have a parachute.

Also, faking a CATO in my mind is stupid. It may look "cool" but CATOs don't occur in every 5 motors that fly. That may also make our hobby seem unsafe, because people will assume that out of every few rockets that you fly, you have get an explosion. I flew rockets for 11 years before having a CATO.


In some cases it's cool, but in other ways it seems like one of those things that should have been thought out more.



Oh, and the Wilson F/X system is pretty cool to have in the video!




Thanks,

muddymooose said:

I think more than anything I'm irritated by the fact that this was an alleged "altitude competition" yet anyone with basic knowledge of the craft would easily know what rockets would go to what altitude on what motors. These dudebros didn't even touch on any of that. They could have predicted this riddle on paper with math and physics and compared it to actual experimental results but ignored all that for the big assplosions. God forbid we help teach the importance of math and physics in the realm of reality or encourage anyone to learn anything.

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Using this logic none of us ever need to launch a rocket.
Do the sim and post the new record to TRF.

M

MClark said:

Using this logic none of us ever need to launch a rocket.
Do the sim and post the new record to TRF.

M

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No. Half the battle is the sim. The other half is proving the sim is correct through experiment.

These dudebros do neither. There's no sim, there's no experiment to prove the sim. They just put big motors in big rockets and go "DUUUDE!!!!"

Personally when I'm about to face a launch of one of my rockets, I have a stack of papers with estimated altitude, max thrust, average thrust, CD, etc. for the motor I'm using. I fret consistently over what I have predicted over the actual result. These dipshits just took what was given to them with the promise that it would "totally boost your viewers on YouTube, bro!"

Almost all of us have watched a movie or commercial that has actors who actually know nothing about rockets, but the very existence of the movie introduces people to model rockets. That’s what this is, an act, and although I wish some of it were presented differently, the number of followers these guys have is staggering. They have 38 million subscribers. In two days this video has been viewed nearly 10 million times.
There’s a good chance we (rocketry in general) will see an increase in interest as a result.
Perfect? No.
Can it work to our advantage? Maybe. I guess we’ll see.