Wow, the Langfords owning Estes.
Those of us rocketeers who dreamed that if only they had the money, they'd buy Estes? Well, one of us DID.
John Langford has been an NAR member since the late 1960's, was national champion in A & B Div a few times, also as a team with Bob Biedron. Also competed at several WSMC's and has been US Team manager many years.
From:
In this photo of the US Team at the 2016 WSMC, John is at the lower left, Ellis Langford behind him, James Duffy back row behind and to the right of Ellis. I'm at the top right.
Also a member of the MIT Rocket Society in the 1970's.
He was deeply involved with the Daedalus project, a human-powered aircraft that flew from Crete to Greece in 1988 (some other MIT grads were also involved such as Bob Parks and "Guppy" Youngren).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus
[video=youtube;4pbKp7ufwns]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbKp7ufwns[/video]
IIRC, John's work on that project led to the creation of Aurora Flight Services, which has employed some well known rocketeers (Bob Parks, Greg Stewart, Ellis Langford among them), though Bob Parks works elsewhere now.
The above are just examples.
I first met John Langford at the NGRM-71 regional meet near Atlanta in 1971, my first contest. I'd read about how well he'd done at NARAM the previous year. This was the first time I met any people outside of the Birmingham area who flew rockets, or were NAR members (or were in Model Rocketry Magazine). Think I first met Roy at that one too. I was just a total newbie nobody with a lot of contest models that did not fly well.