NARAM-50 pics by George Gassaway

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NARAM-50 photos by George Gassaway
July 25-August 1st, 2008

These are photos that I took at NARAM. With info on how we did, what we did, and a few others of note. Our Southern Neutron Team competed, the members are George Gassaway, Ed LaCroix, Terrill Willard, and Ryan Woebkenberg.

For a lot more photos, and NARAM results, please go to Chris Taylor's NARAMlive site. For contest results, go to the "contest" link of each day's flying.

Friday July 25th

Day Before NARAM

Chris Taylor takes a photo of Kevin Kuczek hi-starting his Pushit 2 FAI S8E-P model. The hi-start has rubber tubing and kite line that pulls the glider up like pulling a kite, not a slingshot.

We needed to practice the landings for the World Championships we'll attend later this month (along with our other teammate Greg Stewart).

The NARAM site did not allow anything to fly until Saturday. So, Kevin and I hi-started our models at a local Soccer park Kevin located.

Mike Hellmund saved a lot of old Estes history, including some of the PHOTO models from the 1960's Estes Catalogs. Nighthawk and Aerobee 350 seen here.

Mike also saved many many old photos. This is Vern holding my favorite kit, the Interceptor. Hopefully the old photos will be scanned someday soon.

Saturday July 26th Sport Flying and R/C Rocket Boosted Glider flying	Myself with Vern Estes, who co-designed the first B/G kit, the Astron Space Plane. The 4X R/C Space Plan e in this pic is powered by a G12. Photo by Tom Beach	Launch of the Space Plane 4X, after the 2X prototype flew. Vern is watching at left, with Jay Marsh to the right of Vern. Photo by Tom Beach

The RC Rocket Boosted Glider Range. A totally separate third range. It used BRB's FRS Radio based PA system.	Ryan Woebkenberg, one of the four members of our Southern Neutron Team. Ryan flew his Cuda-Ray flapped S8E-P model.	Ryan's model coming in to land. Unfortunately Ryan, his dad David, and sister Tracy, could only be there for Saturday, leaving after the Old Rocketeer Reunion.

Dave O'Bryan (L), member of many US Teams, talks to Bob Parks (also member of many teams).	Kevin Kuczek's Pushit 2 S8E-P model. It has six servos, four in the wings for aileron-flaps for "Crow" landings, plus one for elevator and one for rudder.	The wing servos are mounted at an angle for the Rotary Drive System (RDS) that make the flaps and ailerons move without using exposed external control horns and pushrods.

My mentor in contest rocketry, Terry Lee, and his youngest daughter. Terry and his Vikings Section in Richmond (VA) used to come to Atlanta once a year in the 1970's and won several championships.	Much thanks to Jim Filler (right) to OK'ing the R/C RBG range to run like it was.	Several of the S8E-P models Bob Parks flew, and an S8D model.

Old Rocketeer Reunion

The ORR was a fantastic event. I saw number of people I had not met before, and some I'd not seen in 20-30 years.

Nick Rivieccio and Jay Marsh

Jay Marsh at right, Kevin Kuczek and Ross Hironaka in background.

Sport Rocketry Magazine Editor Tom Beach

A small portion of the many things on display at the reunion. This one includes the Scout, prototype Space Plane, and the original Big Bertha

Estes photo collage from Vern's home.

Ed LaCroix takes a photo of Terrill Willard posing with an Astron Farside

Sunday July 27th
Sport Flying & R/C Championships

Kevin loads his model into the tower. We got in a good bit more R/C flying, though it was interrupted by a big but short rainstorm, and Kevin had to return to Colorado.

Here is a link to two videos I shot of Kevin's boost and landing, posted on NARAMlive.

Chad Ring had his Light Cuda shred the left wing in two places Saturday, and smashed the servos and pushrods when the fuselage hit the ground. He did an incredible overnight repair job, without the ideal supplies (no 2 ounce fiberglass cloth), and managed not only to limp this model along to third place in the R/C Glider Championships on Sunday, but to WIN C Division D B/G on Monday with a combined two flight total time of nearly 43 minutes.

R/C Glider Championships

1. Kevin Johnson 10:45

2. George Gassaway 7:44

3. Chad Ring 3:10

4. Scott Baird 2:19

There were TEN people who competed!

Rod Schafer had a qualifying flight of about 24 minutes!

This was too good to pass up....

The 4X Space Plane before one of its two Imagination Celebration flights. I flew it twice Saturday, twice Sunday, and four times Friday.

Quest will be coming out with some D, E, and F engines made in China, in 2009.

Monday July 28th
Set Duration had a target time of 50 seconds.

Our team did not do well in that event.

The other event was D Boost Glide

This year's A Division Champion, Alyssa Stenberg, age eight. She "only" took 4th place in D Boost Glide event, but did so flying her first flights on an R/C Rocket Glider. She is the youngest person I know of, by several years, to successfully fly an R/C Rocket Glider that needs to be piloted on boost.

Alyssa's second flight.
She is in the background with her father.

Chris Flanigan flying an old-style
R/C Boost Glider.

D B/G was an interesting event alright. A number of free flight kits that should have held up to the engine they flew on, shredded. Some others were flown with engines that had too much thrust. Still, there were some good flights by free-flight models.

Some had predicted that R/C would sweep all eight of the C and Team Div places.Well, R/C took 6 of the 8 places, but there was one place in both C Div and Team Div that were taken by freeflight models.

Someone defaulted on their bet.....

The thermals were incredible at times. I had very good luck with our R/C model, a flight of 18:05, and a second flight of 19:49, to win Team division. Again, it was incredible how well Chad Ring did with his Humpty-Dumpty rebuilt model, to win C Div. And John Buckley was rewarded for his newly-developed R/C flying skills by getting 4th place in C Division.

If D B/G had been flown in overcast and sometimes drizzy weather like Thursday's, the results would have been a LOT different.

Tuesday July 29th D Eggloft Altitude & B Streamer Dur. Multi-Round	Ed LaCroix with our Southern Neutron Team's first eggloft flight (using a Piston launcher). First flight was staged C6's for 520-something meters. Second flight was a D10 for 570-something meters. Both had nice altitudes capable of 3rd place, but both times parachute problems broke the egg.	Steve Foster and Rod Schafer , as the Flying I-Beam Kids Team, ready their 2-stage Egglofter. It s a very unique short conical design. Once affixed to the piston assembly, they later loaded it inside of a special tube type Tower launcher they devised years ago.

Trip Barber, new NAR President, serving as RSO during the Red crew shift.	Chad Ring and his girlfriend Kat Stephens, watching as Chad's third Streamer flight hits a boomer of a thermal.	Someone else's B Streamer Duration model.

NAR Auction For the Bob Cannon Educational Fund	There were a record number of items up for bid, many are not included in this photo. The auction raised well over $7,000	Tom Lyon was the auctioneer

Vern and Gleda Estes put up some items to be auctioned.	No, Tony Williams, I did not bid on the Star Blazer.	First Centuri Catalog

Then and Now Photo Contest
Photos were put up on a board and numbered showing certain rocketeers as they were years ago, and as they are now. The objective was to name the person, and match the then and now photo numbers.

Here is the wall with all the photos.

Who is THIS????
Really, click on the link and
think before you continue.

My "then" photo was too easy, with a model of a proposed piggyback orbiter (Photo T28). I wish that this 1971 pic I sent, including John Langford, had been used. It was my first NAR contest.
The top three placers in the photo contest were Chad Ring, myself, and Tom Lyon. We had our pick of neat prizes.
Here is a link to a printed page showing who belonged to which photo.

Do not let anyone say Chad Ring is not a Good Sport. It was Chad who sent in the photo above, of himself, not quite two years old, dressed for the Bicentennial.

Wednesday, July 30th
Wednesday was an off day, no flying, due to a limit of no more than 4 consecutive days activities at Great Meadow.

Many people went to the Air & Space museum's Udvar-Hazy center.

Sport Rocketry Publisher Todd Schweim,
Bruce McLeod, Ed LaCroix, and Terrill Willard

Myself a shuttle simulator, which unfortunately was simulating being out of order that day.

Ed, Todd, and Terrill looking at some of the sounding rockets, including a Nike-Apache

Some 1/15 scale models

Terrill with a Saturn-V F-1 engine.

Myself in front of Enterprise for visit #5. I saw it 3 times in 1978 in Huntsville (one flying in, two on display), then 2004, and this year.

Models of early shuttle proposals, mostly with flyback boosters.

A few more.

Thursday, July 31st
C Payload Altitude &

B Helicopter Duration

Ed gives Terrill some tracking powder "Warpaint" before we fly C Payload.

Our Payload model, on a piston launcher. The payload weighs one ounce and is the diameter of an 18mm body tube. Our model used a fiberglass body tube.

Close-up of the model. It flew to 679 meters, far higher than anyone else. BUT, we could not find it, and return is necessary to confirm the payload stayed intact and inside of the model. Ed & Terrill spent over 90 minutes, mostly in a light rain, looking for it. They found three other models and returned them to the lost and found, hoping "Karma" would do the same for our lost model.

And..... KARMA HAPPENS!
A couple of hours after calling off the search, Ed found our model in the lost and found box! So, the flight was officially returned, and we won the event, setting a new team record.

A photo of the model after being returned. I had packed the chutes for the eggloft flights, THIS time Ed packed the chute for the payloader as well as loading the tracking powder.

Does this mean Terrill should wear the tracking "warpaint" every time we fly a tracking event? :-)

Trip Barber RSO's the launch of an internal bladed (FAI type) Helicopter model

Our Southern Neutron Team's internal bladed copter model. It uses a 40mm diameter fiberglass body as used for some of the FAI contest event specs. This is the design George later flew to a Bronze medal in S9A Copter at the 2008 WSMC

Far-off image of the model on flight one, it looks like there is no blade on the left but it is edge-on and too far off for the camera to get a good image of. The first flight was very good, but the second flight had the rotor unit come out at burnout, despite tape to prevent that, causing a blade to break off and DQ. We took 4th place in Team Div.

The FlisKits Rose-A-Rocs did well.

"Freshly former" NAR president Mark Bundick flying a Rotaroc copter model.

Chris Taylor's dual glider sport model. One of the gliders carried a tiny onboard video camera. Here is a link to the video page to find it.

Scale Viewing

Alyssa Stenberg's Saturn-IB. It is based on the Apogee 1/70 kit,

Pierre Miller listens to Peter Alway explaining the "Smooth but Crisp" theory of scale modeling.

Saturn-I model built by Josh Tschirhart of the Meatball Rocketry Team

Here is a link to Josh's "Meatball Rocketry" site with great info on his models and Data

The model won in Team Division

The scale room had pages like this showing well known scale builders through the years

A nice Talos model

Friday, August 1st

SCALE

Saturn-I readied to fly by Meatball Rocketry Team (Kevin Johnson holding the Transmitter, Josh T. prepping model, Jess in next pic).
Josh used R/C to stage it and fire ejection.

Jess & Josh

Launch on two D12's and two C6's.

Josh's Saturn I took first place in Team Division

Alyssa Stenberg with her IB model.

Launch of Alyssa's IB.
It took first place in A Division

"Dark Side" Team's Saturn-IB, with RSO Matt Steele at left.

The cluster ignition "Spider" for Chan Stevens' Soyuz model. The E9 in the center fired down thru the center tube in the spider to cause Pyrodex powder to ignite and branch out to shoot up into the nozzles of 16 micro-maxx engines to ignite them!

Chan getting the Spider to fit just right.

Launch, with Chan at left. A few micro-maxx engines did not ignite, but they were plenty to help make the model fly very nicely. Also note the wisps of smoke out of the spider.
Just realized, Chan's Pop-Lug failed, stuck at the bottom of the rod rather than separating at the top of the rod. No wonder the model tipped off as much as it did.

Chris Kidwell rebuilt his Saturn-IB after the F50 blew it apart, with fuel tanks flying everywhere. The rebuild was good, it flew nicely the second time.

Chad Ring after flying his Aerobee 350.

NARAM-50 CD Jim Filler is happy his IB flew well, or that all of running NARAM at the field is about over, or both.....

Awards Banquet
I did not get any good photos at the banquet. See Chris Taylor's NARAMlive site.

Our Southern Neutron Team only flew five of the eight events, taking first in D Boost Glide and C Payload, plus 4th in B Helicopter Duration.

Those places gave us enough points to take the fourth place trophy for NARAM overall. We came in 6th for the season, having only flown half of the season (Thanks to Ryan who squeezed in two regionals).

The Launch Crue section we fly for came in 3rd place for Sections for the whole season.

"Real Photos" playing up the "51" part of NARAM-51 next year.

Saturday, August 2nd
(going home)

Changed planes at the Charlotte Airport (Free Wi-Fi). Came across this Jeff Gordon Show car. Five BRB members and myself are going to our first NASCAR Race, this October at Talladega. I know who I'm rooting for.

Back to CONTESTS

Friday July 25th Day Before NARAM	Chris Taylor takes a photo of Kevin Kuczek hi-starting his Pushit 2 FAI S8E-P model. The hi-start has rubber tubing and kite line that pulls the glider up like pulling a kite, not a slingshot.	We needed to practice the landings for the World Championships we'll attend later this month (along with our other teammate Greg Stewart).

The NARAM site did not allow anything to fly until Saturday. So, Kevin and I hi-started our models at a local Soccer park Kevin located.	Mike Hellmund saved a lot of old Estes history, including some of the PHOTO models from the 1960's Estes Catalogs. Nighthawk and Aerobee 350 seen here.	Mike also saved many many old photos. This is Vern holding my favorite kit, the Interceptor. Hopefully the old photos will be scanned someday soon.

Old Rocketeer Reunion The ORR was a fantastic event. I saw number of people I had not met before, and some I'd not seen in 20-30 years.	Nick Rivieccio and Jay Marsh	Jay Marsh at right, Kevin Kuczek and Ross Hironaka in background.

Sport Rocketry Magazine Editor Tom Beach	A small portion of the many things on display at the reunion. This one includes the Scout, prototype Space Plane, and the original Big Bertha	Estes photo collage from Vern's home.

Ed LaCroix takes a photo of Terrill Willard posing with an Astron Farside

Kevin loads his model into the tower. We got in a good bit more R/C flying, though it was interrupted by a big but short rainstorm, and Kevin had to return to Colorado. Here is a link to two videos I shot of Kevin's boost and landing, posted on NARAMlive.	Chad Ring had his Light Cuda shred the left wing in two places Saturday, and smashed the servos and pushrods when the fuselage hit the ground. He did an incredible overnight repair job, without the ideal supplies (no 2 ounce fiberglass cloth), and managed not only to limp this model along to third place in the R/C Glider Championships on Sunday, but to WIN C Division D B/G on Monday with a combined two flight total time of nearly 43 minutes.	R/C Glider Championships 1. Kevin Johnson 10:45 2. George Gassaway 7:44 3. Chad Ring 3:10 4. Scott Baird 2:19 There were TEN people who competed! Rod Schafer had a qualifying flight of about 24 minutes!

This was too good to pass up....	The 4X Space Plane before one of its two Imagination Celebration flights. I flew it twice Saturday, twice Sunday, and four times Friday.	Quest will be coming out with some D, E, and F engines made in China, in 2009.

Monday July 28th Set Duration had a target time of 50 seconds. Our team did not do well in that event. The other event was D Boost Glide	This year's A Division Champion, Alyssa Stenberg, age eight. She "only" took 4th place in D Boost Glide event, but did so flying her first flights on an R/C Rocket Glider. She is the youngest person I know of, by several years, to successfully fly an R/C Rocket Glider that needs to be piloted on boost.	Alyssa's second flight. She is in the background with her father.

Chris Flanigan flying an old-style R/C Boost Glider.	D B/G was an interesting event alright. A number of free flight kits that should have held up to the engine they flew on, shredded. Some others were flown with engines that had too much thrust. Still, there were some good flights by free-flight models. Some had predicted that R/C would sweep all eight of the C and Team Div places.Well, R/C took 6 of the 8 places, but there was one place in both C Div and Team Div that were taken by freeflight models. Someone defaulted on their bet.....	The thermals were incredible at times. I had very good luck with our R/C model, a flight of 18:05, and a second flight of 19:49, to win Team division. Again, it was incredible how well Chad Ring did with his Humpty-Dumpty rebuilt model, to win C Div. And John Buckley was rewarded for his newly-developed R/C flying skills by getting 4th place in C Division. If D B/G had been flown in overcast and sometimes drizzy weather like Thursday's, the results would have been a LOT different.

Then and Now Photo Contest Photos were put up on a board and numbered showing certain rocketeers as they were years ago, and as they are now. The objective was to name the person, and match the then and now photo numbers.	Here is the wall with all the photos.	Who is THIS???? Really, click on the link and think before you continue.

My "then" photo was too easy, with a model of a proposed piggyback orbiter (Photo T28). I wish that this 1971 pic I sent, including John Langford, had been used. It was my first NAR contest.	The top three placers in the photo contest were Chad Ring, myself, and Tom Lyon. We had our pick of neat prizes. Here is a link to a printed page showing who belonged to which photo.	Do not let anyone say Chad Ring is not a Good Sport. It was Chad who sent in the photo above, of himself, not quite two years old, dressed for the Bicentennial.

Wednesday, July 30th Wednesday was an off day, no flying, due to a limit of no more than 4 consecutive days activities at Great Meadow. Many people went to the Air & Space museum's Udvar-Hazy center.	Sport Rocketry Publisher Todd Schweim, Bruce McLeod, Ed LaCroix, and Terrill Willard	Myself a shuttle simulator, which unfortunately was simulating being out of order that day.

Ed, Todd, and Terrill looking at some of the sounding rockets, including a Nike-Apache	Some 1/15 scale models	Terrill with a Saturn-V F-1 engine.

Myself in front of Enterprise for visit #5. I saw it 3 times in 1978 in Huntsville (one flying in, two on display), then 2004, and this year.	Models of early shuttle proposals, mostly with flyback boosters.	A few more.

Thursday, July 31st C Payload Altitude & B Helicopter Duration	Ed gives Terrill some tracking powder "Warpaint" before we fly C Payload.	Our Payload model, on a piston launcher. The payload weighs one ounce and is the diameter of an 18mm body tube. Our model used a fiberglass body tube.

Close-up of the model. It flew to 679 meters, far higher than anyone else. BUT, we could not find it, and return is necessary to confirm the payload stayed intact and inside of the model. Ed & Terrill spent over 90 minutes, mostly in a light rain, looking for it. They found three other models and returned them to the lost and found, hoping "Karma" would do the same for our lost model.	And..... KARMA HAPPENS! A couple of hours after calling off the search, Ed found our model in the lost and found box! So, the flight was officially returned, and we won the event, setting a new team record.	A photo of the model after being returned. I had packed the chutes for the eggloft flights, THIS time Ed packed the chute for the payloader as well as loading the tracking powder. Does this mean Terrill should wear the tracking "warpaint" every time we fly a tracking event? :-)

Trip Barber RSO's the launch of an internal bladed (FAI type) Helicopter model	Our Southern Neutron Team's internal bladed copter model. It uses a 40mm diameter fiberglass body as used for some of the FAI contest event specs. This is the design George later flew to a Bronze medal in S9A Copter at the 2008 WSMC	Far-off image of the model on flight one, it looks like there is no blade on the left but it is edge-on and too far off for the camera to get a good image of. The first flight was very good, but the second flight had the rotor unit come out at burnout, despite tape to prevent that, causing a blade to break off and DQ. We took 4th place in Team Div.

The FlisKits Rose-A-Rocs did well.	"Freshly former" NAR president Mark Bundick flying a Rotaroc copter model.	Chris Taylor's dual glider sport model. One of the gliders carried a tiny onboard video camera. Here is a link to the video page to find it.

Scale Viewing		Alyssa Stenberg's Saturn-IB. It is based on the Apogee 1/70 kit,

	Pierre Miller listens to Peter Alway explaining the "Smooth but Crisp" theory of scale modeling.



Saturn-I model built by Josh Tschirhart of the Meatball Rocketry Team	Here is a link to Josh's "Meatball Rocketry" site with great info on his models and Data	The model won in Team Division

The scale room had pages like this showing well known scale builders through the years	A nice Talos model

Friday, August 1st SCALE	Saturn-I readied to fly by Meatball Rocketry Team (Kevin Johnson holding the Transmitter, Josh T. prepping model, Jess in next pic). Josh used R/C to stage it and fire ejection.	Jess & Josh

	Launch on two D12's and two C6's.	Josh's Saturn I took first place in Team Division

	Alyssa Stenberg with her IB model.	Launch of Alyssa's IB. It took first place in A Division

"Dark Side" Team's Saturn-IB, with RSO Matt Steele at left.

The cluster ignition "Spider" for Chan Stevens' Soyuz model. The E9 in the center fired down thru the center tube in the spider to cause Pyrodex powder to ignite and branch out to shoot up into the nozzles of 16 micro-maxx engines to ignite them!	Chan getting the Spider to fit just right.	Launch, with Chan at left. A few micro-maxx engines did not ignite, but they were plenty to help make the model fly very nicely. Also note the wisps of smoke out of the spider. Just realized, Chan's Pop-Lug failed, stuck at the bottom of the rod rather than separating at the top of the rod. No wonder the model tipped off as much as it did.

Chris Kidwell rebuilt his Saturn-IB after the F50 blew it apart, with fuel tanks flying everywhere. The rebuild was good, it flew nicely the second time.	Chad Ring after flying his Aerobee 350.	NARAM-50 CD Jim Filler is happy his IB flew well, or that all of running NARAM at the field is about over, or both.....

Awards Banquet I did not get any good photos at the banquet. See Chris Taylor's NARAMlive site.	Our Southern Neutron Team only flew five of the eight events, taking first in D Boost Glide and C Payload, plus 4th in B Helicopter Duration. Those places gave us enough points to take the fourth place trophy for NARAM overall. We came in 6th for the season, having only flown half of the season (Thanks to Ryan who squeezed in two regionals).	The Launch Crue section we fly for came in 3rd place for Sections for the whole season.

	"Real Photos" playing up the "51" part of NARAM-51 next year.

Saturday, August 2nd (going home)		Changed planes at the Charlotte Airport (Free Wi-Fi). Came across this Jeff Gordon Show car. Five BRB members and myself are going to our first NASCAR Race, this October at Talladega. I know who I'm rooting for.