I just spent 6 weeks in jail on destructive device charges.

Hello fellow rocket enthusiast!
I never saw it coming. At 52 years of age I have been building and launching rockets since i was 9 with my father. Over the years I stopped using kits and built from scratch. I learned to make my own motors with kno3.
It took me a few years of trail and error but I eventually got good enough at it that I hadn't had a catastrophic failure in over 20 years.
Here's where I freely admit and take responsibility for my actions. I became over confident. Living in California, San Francisco at that, I've sat by and watched the hobby I love regulated almost entirely out of existence. Still that doesn't justify what I did.
I launched a medium sized rocket inside city limits. What's worse the rocket suffered a catastrophic failure before getting off the ground.
Now for those of you in the know sugar based propellant can create a lot of smoke and look dramatic if your motors fails. I use cardboard tubing for safety reasons. The thick stuff from carpet rolls.
No one was even close to being hurt let alone scared. There was no property damage.
I have to apologize to you all because this kind of irresponsible behaviour makes it harder for everyone else in the hobby.
I am truly sorry and have given up the hobby. Permanently.
Let this be a warning or a lesson.
I was arrested. My home was searched and the cops trashed everything. I have spent six weeks in jail. I had to post 25k in bail. My land Lord is evicting me. I am still facing charges for creating a destructive device, possession of a explosive, and having a destructive device in a public area. I could go to prison for a very long time.
I would hate to think this could happen to someone else. To me this seems a bit overboard.
Why would a person spend the dozens of hours building, balancing, calculating, and carefully adding the NASA and USA markings by hand to purposely blow it all up. Isn't there some other more appropriate charge?
I would love to hear you all.
And for God's sake, safety first, and consider what happened to me before you break local ordinances.

Thank you.

The 500 block of Leavenworth in the Tenderloin, in San Francisco CA!? I do not envy your struggles, nor do I wish to pile on.

I will only point out that none of the Model Rocketry, High Power, or Research Safety Code allow for any such flight. All of them require empty space and a cooperative authority having jurisdiction.

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice; but I believe such a person would likely recommend you not post online about such things.

No one was even close to being hurt let alone scared. There was no property damage.

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https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Rocket-explosion-in-SF-s-Tenderloin-leads-to-13764038.php

According to this article you scared at least one person enough to call the police and you singed a parking meter.

This thread will be deleted soon.

Welcome to the hotel californai

I recommend you read the local laws and stay up to date before you make for fly rockets. Some states, the lows are rapidly changing.

dhbarr said:

I will only point out that none of the Model Rocketry, High Power, or Research Safety Code allow for any such flight. All of them require empty space and a cooperative authority having jurisdiction.

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice; but I believe such a person would likely recommend you not post online about such things.

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Very good points. Gathering allies on a forum are not going to help your legal challenges.

The news story:
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/04/12/san-francisco-rocket-explosion-arrest/

Something is not right about this story.

I'm calling "shens" on this. I think he knew what he was doing and this was some kind of stunt, perhaps an attempt to become e-famous, and his public apology to the hobbyist community disingenuous. No serious hobbyist with 41 years experience sets off an unattended scratch built sugar rocket in an Urban area. From the story he took off on his bike before the rocket ignited and CATO's. No sympathy AT ALL. Never been to SF but from Google maps it looks like this was a busy, urban street.. not even a park. If he was single-handedly looking to damage the STELLAR reputation of an entire sport hobby... congratulations.. mission accomplished.

I hate to get up on a soapbox here, but this kind of behavior only harms our hobby. Community perception is reality, and in today's overly public safety concerned environment this hobby is one stroke of a pen from being legislated out of existence. A PRIME example is the hobby of drone flying. Just as I was starting to get into that hobby a bunch of irresponsible idiots began flying (and crashing) into crowds of people, unsuspecting people in parks, rooftops, near airports, you name it. Now it's very regulated and I can't even legally fly a drone in my own back yard because I'm within 2 miles of an airport. Imagine what would happen to rocketry if this stunt was DC? or NYC? Or if someone would have been injured during that stunt. At the very least rocket motors would be pulled from the shelves in US until the gov't figured out how to regulate the hobby. At the worst, a complete ban!

I certainly hope this guy learns his lesson. 6 weeks in the graybar hotel fits the crime if he was just a moron. If it was something more sinister...

Oh, anyone else catch the irony of this occurring at the corner of O'Farrell and LEAVENWORTH streets?

I wouldn't think anyone would be dumb enough to try to launch a rocket in a dense city area, but then someone comes along and proves me wrong. There's no open space there at all.


I don't believe the OP was trying to launch a rocket. I believe he was up to something else.

Kudos to the San Francisco police for finding and arresting the perpetrator.

Maybe he'll share a cell with Stephen Beal

I've mentioned here before that BATFE's explosives list which includes at their whim pretty much anything with a fuel and an oxidizer and specifically includes KNO3 mixtures make sugar rocket making a legal hazard. From incidents I've read about, local cops go by what the BATFE tells them even if there are no local laws specifically related to the offense. "Destructive device" is a BATFE term although it's probably not unique to them..

The specific exemption on the BATFE list for APCP exists ONLY because NAR and Tripoli actually made a rare legal challenge to their "explosive" claim and rightfully won. KNO3 based mixtures are not exempted. Even Make Magazine had an article on how to make sugar rockets and I warned them via email about the legal hazard. No response and no retraction or warning from them.

dhbarr said:

The 500 block of Leavenworth in the Tenderloin, in San Francisco CA!? I do not envy your struggles, nor do I wish to pile on.

I will only point out that none of the Model Rocketry, High Power, or Research Safety Code allow for any such flight. All of them require empty space and a cooperative authority having jurisdiction.

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice; but I believe such a person would likely recommend you not post online about such things.

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Really well said Glen..
+1...
I was wondering how there was surveillance footage..
On what I thought would have been a quite one way one lane streets intersection...
Look at the the Google map pic..
That's a really big, busy intersection..

I agree, the op had more in mind then he is letting onto now..

Teddy

I hope your not a NAR or Tripoli member, for the sake of the hobby!

Look at the bright side, you will be spending less time, less money for your actions than if the rocket would have taken off and stuck and injured or killed somebody. Thank you for permanently giving up the hobby.

Scott Campbell said:

I've sat by and watched the hobby I love regulated almost entirely out of existence. Still that doesn't justify what I did.

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Why do you think the regulations were in place?
Why do you think you could (should?!) be exempt from such regulations?

Why do you think we even have regulations in the first place?! (And why they're reviewed & revised over time?!)

being 12 or 16 is one thing.. but "43 years experience" is no excuse nor a pleas for sympathy or
leniency..

Way too much missing info I think............ He has been building rockets for years ? Joined the Forum YESTERDAY
What the hell is with the getting on a bicycle and leaving the scene?

Sorry I don't have any sympathy. A$$#*!3

I wouldn't trust ANYTHING you read in the papers or other media about this incident. You can't sell many papers reporting about a model rocket launch gone awry; you can sell way more by reporting on the "d*tonation" of a we*pon of mass d*struction which spews smoke and debris over city blocks. Good thing the guy didn't have a gun at home, or that would have been reported as a 'cache' of military-grade we*pons and ammo.

That said, definitely seems a poor choice to attempt a launch in a dense city area.

cwbullet said:

Something is not right about this story.

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Can you check the IP from which the OP is posting? Seems like a pretty obvious troll; a new member who joined just to confess, weird use of idioms like "in the know". "of age" and "at that", the (probably reflexive) capitalization of "Lord" in landlord. I am guessing this is a sock puppet worn by one some established forum member who lives far away from San Francisco (geographically and/or culturally). While the spelling of "behaviour" is standard everywhere but in the US, I don't think it is one of our Australian members winding us up.

edit: fixed a typo of my own.

jlabrasca said:

Can you check the IP from which the OP is posting?

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IP is Chicago area. Could be troll, could be masked by VPN.

I don’t know what actually happened. It sounds like the person made something he claimed to be a rocket, laid it on a city sidewalk, lit a fuse to it and pedaled way. Now he’s trying to claim that rocketry is a beloved hobby, even though he was doing exactly what organizations dedicated to rocketry condemn as irresponsible and dangerous.
There’s a person with a similar name who’s active enough in the Occupy Movement to attend demonstrations, be shot with a beanbag, and involved in legal proceedings for that:
https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PN-CA-0021-0001.pdf

It may be that this person is simply trying to establish that he was a rocketry person as a legal tactic. That’s my first thought, but I have no insight.

There is a valuable lesson here. Those people who dismiss as over conservative the warnings that casually experimenting with homemade propellant can get them into legal trouble should be aware that law enforcement will not accept Rocketry as a defense.
I hope his post is not deleted, but take it with a large salt grain.

timbucktoo said:

IP is Chicago area. Could be troll, could be masked by VPN.

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Thanks.

Steve Shannon said:

There’s a person with a similar name who’s active enough in the Occupy Movement to attend demonstrations, be shot with a beanbag, and involved in legal proceedings for that:
https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PN-CA-0021-0001.pdf

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That's a stretch. Timothy Scott Campbell was bean-bagged by Oakland Police.

Whitepage.com comes up with 40 listings for "Scott Campbell" in San Francisco.

edit: Removed a tangled and non sequitur argument about how likely it would be for the (stereo)typical Occupy protestor to have a white pages.com listing.

jlabrasca said:

Thanks.



That's a stretch. Timothy Scott Campbell was bean-bagged by Oakland Police.

Whitepage.com comes up with 40 listings for "Scott Campbell" in San Francisco.

edit: Removed a tangled and non sequitur argument about how likely it would be for the (stereo)typical Occupy protestor to have a white pages.com listing.

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I agree; it’s unlikely to be the same person.

Also, the Scott Campbell in the white pages is probably the San Francisco artist. Also not the OP. [emoji16]

This world is getting crazier by the day.

grouch said:

This world is getting crazier by the day.

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Seems like it until I think about Watergate and Nixon, Patti Hearst, Charles Manson, the Kent State shootings, etc.
Or further back in time to the Bath school bombing.
The world has always had its share of crazy people. These are just more noticeable to us.

Steve Shannon said:

Seems like it until I think about Watergate and Nixon, Patti Hearst, Charles Manson, the Kent State shootings, etc.
Or further back in time to the Bath school bombing.
The world has always had its share of crazy people. These are just more noticeable to us.

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I'd really, really like to believe that Steve..
But it sure does seem as the years go by there are more and more crazy's
doing more and more crazy crap....

Teddy

I was just coming on here to post that I didn't think that the OP was actually the person who did this, but others beat me to it. In my opinion the OP is just someone seeking attention. If he is the real deal he certainly isn't doing himself any favors by saying what he is on a public forum. Either way, I think the mods should lock his account.

Don't use Hobby Rocketry as an "alibi" for criminal activity.

Sorry to be blunt. This needs to exposed for what it is. A fugitive with outstanding warrants, decorated a bomb to look like hobby rocket, and is now posting on TRF to create reasonable doubt.

San Francisco is densely populated, but there are a few parks and a baseball diamond or two. If you were desperate to launch... would you do so on a city street?

And with Social Media all the crazies can find birds of a feather very easily.

Onebadhawk said:

I'd really, really like to believe that Steve..
But it sure does seem as the years go by there are more and more crazy's
doing more and more crazy crap....

Teddy

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Thank the internet, the crazies are probably not a higher percentage nowadays than in the past, but with the instant publicity that the internet allows crazy stuff from all over the world becomes instant news. Thirty years ago this wouldnt have made it past the local paper.

Steve Shannon said:

I don’t know what actually happened. It sounds like the person made something he claimed to be a rocket, laid it on a city sidewalk, lit a fuse to it and pedaled way. Now he’s trying to claim that rocketry is a beloved hobby, even though he was doing exactly what organizations dedicated to rocketry condemn as irresponsible and dangerous.
There’s a person with a similar name who’s active enough in the Occupy Movement to attend demonstrations, be shot with a beanbag, and involved in legal proceedings for that:
https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PN-CA-0021-0001.pdf

It may be that this person is simply trying to establish that he was a rocketry person as a legal tactic. That’s my first thought, but I have no insight.

There is a valuable lesson here. Those people who dismiss as over conservative the warnings that casually experimenting with homemade propellant can get them into legal trouble should be aware that law enforcement will not accept Rocketry as a defense.
I hope his post is not deleted, but take it with a large salt grain.

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I agree with your assessment. The only statement I have to make is: not too smart. I can’t imagine this guy is someone we want in the hobby.

Onebadhawk said:

I'd really, really like to believe that Steve..
But it sure does seem as the years go by there are more and more crazy's
doing more and more crazy crap....

Teddy

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Well, this seems likely.

Assume some fixed percentage of the population is crazy. As the population grows, the number of crazies grows in proportion.

Assume, further, that craziness is detectable in person-to-person interactions. As the the density of the population grows, the rate of such interactions increases, and the likelihood of detection events increases.

There are probably feedbacks in this system. Craziness may not just be detected by, but may also be activated by person-to-person interactions. Increasing the number of such interactions increases the rate of possibly triggering events.

But Steve Shannon's observation is correct. There are cognitive biases that incline us toward selective recall regarding past horrors. It is very difficult to compare something reported in a recent news cycle to any historical event.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1979:_History

rharshberger said:

Thank the internet, the crazies are probably not a higher percentage nowadays than in the past, but with the instant publicity that the internet allows crazy stuff from all over the world becomes instant news. Thirty years ago this wouldnt have made it past the local paper.

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It does seem as if Facebook/instagram/Snapchat/Twitter etc. are vectors for the transmission of various folies à plusieurs -- (although one is forced to wonder about the distortions introduced by troll-bots and troll-farms).

If it was indeed a rocket it would seem like it's not so much what you did that's the issue, but where you did it.

Gotta be more to the story.

Scott, Post up some photo's of your past rocket builds, there's gotta be a bunch of them that you are proud of if in fact rocketry is indeed the passion you have stated it is in your life.

rharshberger said:

Thank the internet, the crazies are probably not a higher percentage nowadays than in the past, but with the instant publicity that the internet allows crazy stuff from all over the world becomes instant news. Thirty years ago this wouldnt have made it past the local paper.

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See,, now that's the truth Rich..
The internet makes any form of communication immensely more efficient..
Whether it be shopping or looking to spread an ideology or looking for others that share that ideology...

lakeroadster said:

If it was indeed a rocket it would seem like it's not so much what you did that's the issue, but where you did it.

Gotta be more to the story.

Scott, Post up some photo's of your past rocket builds, there's gotta be a bunch of them that you are proud of if in fact rocketry is indeed the passion you have stated it is in your life.

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Now that's a great point John..
If I know rocketeers they have some things in common..
They're proud as heck of a special build for one..
The op hasn't posted here again..
He's just getting a chuckle out of all of this malarkey...
If he isn't full of crap,
he'll come post some pics of old builds..

Teddy