The REAL History of HPR & LDRS . . .

http://northernohiotra.com/history/ldrshistory.html

http://northernohiotra.com/documents/LDRShistory.pdf


LDRS HISTORY

( Originally appearing in SNOAR News, and reprinted in the Tripolitan. It is reprinted here as an updated version. )

By Christopher T. Pearson

The story of the first organized national High-Power sport launch, the first to get a FAA waiver, and the first to cause the NAR to expel members.

About the author : He got started in model rocketry in 1967, at the tender age of 13 years old while the US and the USSR were at the height of the Moon race,. By 1976, at the ripe old age of 22, he was ready for something more than NAR competition and Estes' rocket kits. Having been introduced to motors "bigger than a "D" by Flight Systems Inc., he entered the forbidden (at least as defined by the NAR) realm of what was called "illegal amateur rocketry", that was, at the time, anything weighting more than one pound and having more than four ounces of propellant. Clusters of D, E and F black powder motors soon gave way to early composites. Reinforced Estes and Centuri model rocket kits adapted to take high-power motors quickly evolved into what was considered "big " for the time, four inch diameter rockets of original design and later those produced by the first high-power rocket kit companies. The rest is history.

The LDRS story actually got started a number of years before the first LDRS was held in a northern Ohio farm field. Here's how it began:

As with many people, I started into model rocketry as a teenager, but more adult things, like cars, motorcycles, girls, a job and college forced me to put rocketry on the backburner for a while. When I got back into rocketry, even though I was heavily involved in NAR competition until 1978, I wanted to try something different. I got started in highpower rocketry, as it existed then, back in 1976. I quickly made contacts with people all over the country that were involved in the emerging high-power hobby. Some of these people were Gary Rosenfield (then of Pro-Jet, predecessor of Composite Dynamics and Aerotech), Roger Johnson (aka: The Rocket Clown), Korey (the Ace from Space) Kline of Ace Rockets, the first High-Power rocket kit company, Mark Mahyle of Small Rocket Sounding Systems, another composite motor and kit company, along with others who were, at the time, taking "model rocket technology" to the limits. MRT, (Model Rocket Technology), as it was also called, referred to high-power rockets made from model rocket components.

Between 1972 and 1978, unless you had an "in" with a motor manufacturer, about the only thing there was for the High-Power crowd was either clustering D12's or using FSI motors. Centuri/Enerjet had ceased motor production, although limited motors were still available and being used. This was before any of the early composite rocket motor companies arrived on the scene. Some of the people that were visible in the early High-Power community were Scott Dixon of Vulcan Systems, and Irv Waite, formerly of Rocket Development Company, father of the Enerjet line of composite rocket motors. They were both producing professional rocket motors for military and industrial use, but for the right amount of $$$, they could be persuades to make motors for you.

Before this time, there were many notable, and now very rare and collectable, High-Power rocket motors. Pro-Dyne, maker of F thru G class motors. Coaster, who made large E, F and G black powder motors, and Centuri Mini-Max, also D, E, and F black powder motors. They had all vanished from the rocketry scene by 1970. Gary Rosenfield was one of the new breed of composite motor manufacturers, as his first company, ProJet, produced F and G composite motors. Mark Mahyle of SSRS (later known as Crown Rocket Technology) entered the foray with E thru H composites motors, and a little known company called Plasmajet, run by John Krell and Randy Sobczak, made F thru I motors. So with those new motor manufacturers producing a new generation of motors, a number of high-power kit manufacturers soon followed suit. Unfortunately, as with most hobby-type businesses, many people entered the hobby and left just as quickly. Gary Rosenfield joined forces with John Davis and formed Composite Dynamics, which gave rocketry mass-marketed composite 24mm E and F motors, as well as the first endburning composite, the 29mm E9, a motor which, ten years earlier, Enerjet had called "impossible". Other early companies produced specialized items for the high-power community such as launchers, pads, etc.

Unbeknownst to the NAR, a number of people at the time were flying high-power rockets at local sport launches or side by side with competition rockets at NAR events. Unlike NARAM's today, where the sport range is busier than the competition range, sport flying was almost unheard of at a NAR launch. At one of our regional meets early in 1980, several uncertified F. G and H motors were flown in overweight rockets. Somehow, word of this leaked out and later that year while at NARAM-22, another SNOAR member and I were called on the carpet by Mark Bundick, the National Contest Board Chairman and questioned about it. This is where the famous, "Who flew the G?" quote came from.

Roger Johnson, Richard Morris, Melodi Rosenfield, THE HELIX ROCKET, Kore Kline, Michael Morris (holding 80 fired F40 motors still glued together) and Gary Rosenfield at Smoke Creek in the late '70s

My high-power contacts in California told me of all the extreme rocket flying that was happening out there: huge clusters of F and G motors, real metal vehicles, special effects rockets and so on. I wanted to observe what was going on in high-power rocketry on the west coast, so, in 1981; I journeyed to Smoke Creek, Nevada, to attend the annual Memorial Day Amateur Rocket Launch. This was sponsored by the Rocket Research Institute, and is primarily for the zinc/sulphur crowd, but they allowed the launching of large model rockets and MRT vehicles, along with a lot of professional pyrotechnics people who lit up the nighttime sky with fireworks demonstrations. While there, I heard Roger Johnson say something that was to stay with me long after the launch, and that was "We're going to fly some large and dangerous rocket ships!"

To tell you the truth, I was actually somewhat disappointed by what I saw flying out at Smoke Creek. Except for the zinc/sulphur and asphalt/per chlorate rockets being flown by Dr. Key's high school group, it was rather mundane. It was nothing like what is flown at LDRS today. Primarily a lot of four-inch stuff with clusters of F and G motors, and an occasional H or I motor. And as for the launch facilities, you walked out away from the cars, stuck a rod in the desert floor and ignited the motors with fuse and a match! Nothing like I was led to believe was flown.

Later that summer, the NAR section that I belonged to ran a regional meet in which we flew a number of E and F competition events, which was very rare for sections even today. We advertised it as a meet for "you Large and Dangerous Rocket Ship fans. " Also flown during that event were actual High-Power rockets powered by non-certified motors.

It was only a few months later that I let my NAR membership lapse after being a member for 14 years. When other NAR members asked me the reason, I explained that it was because I wanted to fly rockets that would exceed the NAR's limits, and I didn't want to cause problems by doing so. I was later told by a NAR official that this was probably the best way to have done it, rather than openly flying High-Power and daring the NAR to do something about is, as some people did.

Shortly after that I began planning what would later become the first national High-Power rocket launch, LDRS. The name LDRS was an acronym for "Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships", just as I had heard Roger Johnson say it at Smoke Creek the year before. LDRS was the first MRT, or high-power rocketry, event that was promoted as such. I found out what I needed to do to get a FAA waiver to legally fly "amateur" rockets. When I contacted the Oberlin Air Traffic Control Center about the waiver, they were baffled! They had never issued a waiver before! So it was a learning experience for both of us.

END of PART 1 . . .