After picking away at it here and there for a few months, I
finally finished "Handbook of Model Rocketry, 7th Edition." The twentieth and last chapter, "Where Do I Go From Here?" discussed HPR, but not in any great detail. It did say that HPR conforms to different regulations than LPR and lists the "High-Powered Rocketry Safety Code," which includes 16 items in this edition. Then it moves on to L1, L2 and L3 certification, but again at a very high level, most of which likely appears online. Along the way, it also mentions automated deployment, hybrid rocket motors (along with the
www.flyhybrids.org website, which now seems to be about home repair) and
www.rocketryonline, which also doesn't seem to exist anymore.
A very short epilogue basically says "thank you and good luck!" and then transitions into a series of appendices. These begin with important addresses and websites, equations for CP, the full BASIC code for RASP-93, STABCAL-2 and MRDR-2, schematics for a "triple-track tracker," reduction tables for three station elevation-angle-only tracking, sample NAR section bylaws and the usual bibliography and main index.
Overall, I don't regret reading the entire book. It had some very dated parts that really need updating, but it covered enough of the basics and history of the hobby to make it worthwhile. No one will learn the latest hot trends or technologies from it, but everyone will get a solid foundation on model rocketry, along with a number of amusing anecdotes and even a few intimidating-looking mathematical forumulas.
I'm curious to recreate the BASIC programs and see how they run in today's BASIC compilers. None of the programs look very complicated, so they should run just fine. I'm guessing that most of the functionality covered in that code now gets covered in other, and now more handier, formats. Has anyone tried to recreate these programs in JavaScript or a modern web language? It probably wouldn't be too difficult, but programs like Open Rocket and RockSim may now render these older programs redundant. Speaking of those programs, the book did mention RockSim at one point, but I don't remember seeing any references to Open Rocket.
Now I'm hoping to move onto an HPR book - many people on this forum have recommended Canepa's "Modern High-Powered Rocketry 2," though with the caveat that it's now a little dated itself. So, in these doldrums of launching, I can at least read up and prepare theoretically for my next step in HPR. We'll see.