Happy Birthday, Myke Bergenske!
 

I hope you are doing well and have a great birthday!

Indeed! Happy Birthday Myke!

I had questions about the whereabouts of the old AVI / MPC engine making machines.
A few months back, I did a search and found Myke Bergenske's phone number.
I called - he answered!

The complete story is here:
http://modelrocketbuilding.blogspot...s-answered.html

I wonder how Myke is doing. Several years ago I engaged in a email conversation with Myke about his personal history regarding Amateur Rocketry and the beginnings of MRI and later MPC. But one day he just disappeared off the face of the earth. I hope he's still kickin and enjoying his life. I lost the email conversations in a disk head crash a few years ago. Some of the same info that Chris provides above was exactly what he told me.....

Happy Birthday Myke!


Terry Dean

Thanks for the information, Chris.

Let me add some more information on the MPC motor making machines.

Back in 1987-88, I worked in Phoenix at Enertek and Bill Stine was my immediate superior. While working at Enertek, Bill and his father, G. Harry Stine, were working on some sort of 'secret' project.

I later found out that they were on a QUEST (Can't believe I wrote that) to find the old MPC plastic molds and motor making machines. They spent quite a bit of time running down leads, searching files (One of them even went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.).

Finally, they located the molds and motor machines. The molds had been kept in a climate-controlled storage facility and were in prestty good shape. Those molds were purchased from the then-current owner.

As for the motor machines, Bill arrived too late. FSI had gotten to the storage facility where the machines had been located a week earlier and had taken them. There were three machines, two for making 18mm motors, one for the 13mm motors.

The motor machines had not been stored as well as the molds and were in poor condition. Also, FSI did not have any information about how to operate the machines. The FSI folks decided to try and get one of the machines working and hooked up air lines to the machine and turned it on. They had the pressure (psi) wrong and blew apart the machine.

One of the Stine's had found out that FSI had the machines and managed to contact FSI to offer to get the machines running. G. Harry had a copy of the Operations Manual for the motor machines.

Bill Stine offered to come out to the FSI plant and get at least one of the machines running in return for FSI producing motors for Bill's new rocket company. FSI agreed and Bill set up one of the machines and got it running. Now Bill had a source for rocket motors.

I spoke to Harold Reese a few years later and he told me that the motor machines could produce enough 18mm motors for FSI in one day to last them many months!

Quest evenually set up new motor making machines on an Indian Reservation in Arizona to make their motors until there was a tragic fire and the plant was closed. These motor making machines still exist. There is two for making 18mm motors and one for the Micro-Maxx. I saw the 18mm machines when I visited Quest a back in November 2009 (The Micro-Maxx machine was packed away somewhere in the warehouse).

The MPC motor machines may still be located at the closed down FSI plant. I don't know.

Well, they were in one of the "right" states for that--vision quests are rather common in the western states, as well as in Alaska (although it isn't usually white people who engage in them). :-)Were you referring to the machine for making the new Micro-Maxx (6 mm) motors, or the MPC Minijet (13 mm) motors? If you meant the former, do you know what became of the 13 mm motor machine?

The Chinese model rocket firm known as "Sky Model Rockets" in the US produces 13 mm black powder motors of various lengths, so if the MPC Minijet machine is no longer extant or serviceable, Sky could produce duplicates of the Minijet motors.

I was referring to the Micro-Maxx motor machine.

My last information was that the MPC 13mm Minijet motor making machine was located at the FSI facility.

Thank you for this information (and for the other mold & motor machine information), Bob. I have a few early Quest motors that have the MPC-type white "bell-mouth" nozzles.

Sounds like someone needs to AUTO-CAD those things before they are lost forever! And get copies of the manuals put up on YORS for safe keeping...

Chris,

Is Myke still with us and doing rocketry or retired?

J

I think he's semi-retired but still involved with business of some sort.
I don't know if he is still flying rockets, any current rocketry activity didn't come up in the conversation. I was more curious as to what happened to his engine making machines.
The extra information he gave me was a interesting bonus.
Years back, I built show models for AVI. I was sent a bunch of engines once. He sounded surprised that I was still using the MPC/AVI Minijets.
I didn't have a hard time finding the phone number. Both his first and last names have a unique spelling.

He and his wife Linda are still together, both sounded surprised to hear from me after all this time.