I'm pretty sure Jerry is right on this score... it'd be difficult to determine. Not many though. Probably the worst was the kid that was impaled by a wayward X-15 up in the Dallas area IIRC a decade or so ago... pierced his chest and had to be surgically removed and of course internal injuries IIRC. Other than that, I can't say. I've seen and read about plenty of "near misses" over the years, that's for sure, *PARTICULARLY* in high-power activities...

With a $5,000 deductible (last time I checked) it's up to the local club or the individual flyer to pay for most "incidental damages" or minor claims-- the insurance doesn't even "kick in" until above that level, so a lot probably wouldn't even show up anyway. Of course it's in their best interest to keep it all on the hush-hush anyway...

The insurance, as far as NAR is concerned, has a kind of convoluted history anyway. In the "old days" (prior to the mid-90's) the insurance was actually *VOLUNTARY* and you could get a NAR membership WITHOUT buying the insurance. Back when I was in high school in the late 80's, a NAR membership was only about $15-20 (IIRC) and the insurance was an additional $26 (again IIRC). This was back when the coverage was up to $1 million... Then at some point in the early-mid 90's, the underwriting company that had provided the coverage at reasonable rates for a LONG period of time decided to drop the policy, and NAR had to scramble to find some sort of insurance coverage... for awhile they teamed up with the AMA (model aircraft association) to get insurance, until finally they got some company (maybe the same one) to provide the NAR with a policy of its own again... Of course the insurance company *required* that ALL NAR members had to carry the coverage (buy the insurance) and at that point NAR made the insurance mandatory and added the cost of the insurance to the NAR membership fees/costs, which greatly increased the costs of NAR memberships, particularly if you were flying off your own farm like I was growing up and didn't want or need the insurance.

I was out of the hobby during the early-mid 90's, but I bought a collection of NAR magazines (from around the time that the old "American Spacemodeling" played out and the period where NAR basically didn't have a magazine, or only came out with some "newsprint" versions a couple times a year until they FINALLY got their house in order and started putting out a new magazine on a regular basis, "Sport Rocketry"... The collection I bought spans that period and explained the goings-on pretty well... This was about the time HPR was finally becoming "legal" under NAR rules (ie they figured out that NAR could continue to oppose HPR and become "irrelevant" as they drove their membership wanting to do HPR over to Tripoli, or they could "embrace change" and come up with some sensible way to incorporate HPR activities into NAR rules...)

Later! OL J R

Later! OL J R

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