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Old 02-19-2018, 11:24 AM
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pterodactyl pterodactyl is offline
Opinions mine; not of NAR or MOF!
 
Join Date: May 2007
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Neil was an enthusiastic aeromodeler in his younger years all the way up to and including his time in Houston. In high school and college he competed in AMA sponsored national and international competitions. His favored event was control line speed, and some of his models are preserved in the AMA and Ohio Historical Society collections. Neil even brought some of his models to his new job with NASA but the models were lost in a house fire they had in the mid 60's. Neil was also an early member of the American Rocket Society which later became the AIAA. We should have sent him a NAR card!

On July 25, 2011 when NARAM-53 was being held near Cincinnati, he had the opportunity to examine a Team USA Junior B/G model built by Katherine Humphrey. He must have spent ten minutes looking at that very nicely constructed model and he had a ton of questions about it. Most memorably he asked "is this a kit or a scratch built model"? I think for him this was a measure of how "serious" the competition was as well as a good indicator of the modeler's workmanship. I believe he gave Katherine good marks in that department!

Katherine's model was a Bob Park's design which featured a variable camber system which was spring actuated at pod separation. Neil spent a good bit of time looking at that mechanism and was also quite interested in Bob's resume which included time with John Langford's Aurora Flight Sciences. Neil mentioned that Langford's name and Aurora were both familiar to him.

Many people on the forum might think that they are world's removed from a guy like Neil Armstrong. The reality is that since we are a community of people who love to built and watch things that fly we are much more similar than unlike him. He would have fit in well at any of our NAR launches as one of the guys.

In July, 2011 during NARAM-53 some people may have noticed an elderly gentleman in a nearby parking lot quietly watching the rockets fly. That was probably Neil Armstrong. One year and one month later he was gone and the world lost an icon.
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National Collection Images: G. Harry Stine Collection/The Museum of Flight.
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