How I became a BAR

What, you may be asking yourself, does he think he's talking about? BAR?

Well,I recently ran into that term on a website being used to describe someone who was into the hobby of model rocketry once way back in their youth, and are now older, richer and more fervent in their pursuit of the hobby, thus Born Again Rocketeers. BAR.

With slight apologies to Estes, Quest and other manufacturers of model rockets, let me briefly describe what has happened to model rocketry in an effort ot make it more immediate and therefore acceptable to today's impatient little monsters. Once upon a time rocket kits came in the mail to you and you spent anywhere from an hour to a week agonizing over cuting out the fins, sanding and painting the fins and the balsawood nose cone, getting the fins attached correctly so that all 3 or 4 weren't on the same side of the body tube. Final painting and decal application took another day or more if your paint job called for multiple overlapping colors.

Good fun, good times, and a good experience in Xacto knife use, patience and fine building skills.My friend and neighbor Alan and I had fun with this. We couldn't do too many launches since engines cost more that our combined weekly allowance (each) plus shipping, but the ones we build and launch were treasures.Including the Estes Scout that went up, up, up, caught a side wind and came down, down, down about 150 feet away, hitting right next to my father who was sitting on our back patio having a cool beer on a hot day. Surprise, dad!

We now have an unfortunate era of "got to have it now... got to make it fly right now!" Today, a high percentage of the kits feature a hollow plastic nose cone, a body tube or perhaps two that get quickly glued together with a little slip in ring between them, and a fully formed set of plastic fins perfectly arranged around a plastic tube that fits over one end of the body tube (you still have to learn that it is the bottom or non nose cone end where this goes) and gets held in place by a drop or two of super glue. Even the parachute comes preassembled and needs to just be tied and glued into place.

That's it. That is all it takes. 5 minutes, if that! Except for some painting, maybe, but some of these kits come prepainted or wrapped in colorful "skins." About the only skill involved is in not getting your fingers glued together with the super glue. And Estes even once made a large inflatable rtocket called "The Dude" buy some but "The Dud" by others. Blow it up, shove an engine up one end and watch it go. Fun? No... not really.

BORING.

Now, BARing is another thing. In this version you go out and buy a lot of individual components (sheets of balsa wood, packages of body tubes, assorted parachutes, pieces to make engine mounts, lots of engines, etc.) and start coming up with designs on your own. At least, that is how I approach the sport.

My childhood rocketeering years (ages 6 through 11) were filled with Estes "Scout" and "Big Bertha" and even a "CamRoc" or two powered by such classic engines as the A8-3 and the B6-4 or even the mighty C6-5 for those flights high enough to catch a cross breeze almost guaranteed to blow your rocket 1/2 mile away.

In my late 20's I had a one-year renaissance of rocket building where I stuck to a few of the more complex kits and then added about a half-dozen designs of my own to my set of rockets. I discovered the fun of using an underpowered engine to launch a rocket up only about 20 feet only to see it turn around and drive itelf back into the ground (THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED ROCKETEERING.) But I also got a taste of the newer, larger and more powerful "D" series Estes engine. Those of my rockets witha wide enough body tube to hold one could now fly not just 500-1000 feet but up into the 1500-1600 foot area.

Of course, this also began my learning phase about center of gravity vs center of pressure where if you have one in front of the other, you fly. The other way around and you wobble or just go all crazy.

Now in my late 40's I have found out that there are model rockets and their cousins the sports and other larger, more powerful rockets to be made and flown. I heartily recommend that parents get their kids interested in real model rocketry. and the sooner the better. Oh sure, start with one of the assembles in 1/2 hour kits just to get something that flies as quickly as possible, but quickly graduate to the skill level kits that require creating fins from scratch, positioning them correcty, building an engine mount tube, and that sort of thing.

But when the kids are asleep, and especially if you are a BAR, just think of the wonders you can do.

Quest makes a series of what they call Micro Maxx rockets and engines. The rockets are preassembled and stand about 5 inches tall, are about as thick as a pencil and feature engines that are 3/16th of an inch wide by 3/4 inch long and fly about 50-120 feet. Great if you have a 20 foot by 20 foot back or front yard and no wind. They go "pop" and jup up then they come back down. (I've build a 'real' rocket that uses three of these engines in a cluster. It weighs about 13 grams with the engines and tumbles back to earth after the engines pop the nose cone off. It goes up to about 200 feet when all three engines ignits, to about 90 feet when twp of them do, and doesn't leave the ground when only one fires off.)

A typical quick kit gives you a rocket that stands between 8-inches and 12-inches.An advanced kit can be a couple feet tall or even more.

And then we move into the realm of "you mean, that will actually fly?" rockets. My current fleet has a couple rockets that are over 5 feet tall with a 6 foot 5 inch one on the way.And now I can launch them with larger and more powerful Series E, F and even G engines as long as I do this at sponsored events held in appropriate locations. Like not near airports and not within about a quarter mile of any house or building.

These fly slower and more majestically. The little poppers sometimes get off so fast that you think they just disintegrated. The larger ones lift off relatively slow and then quickly gain speed and altitude. Some, properly built and matched with the right engines can go several thousand feet in the air. As in half a mile or so up. As in, 'oh-oh...where id it go...ah, there's the parachute..." sort of flights.

But the fun doesn't stop at the G engines. For those who have a lot of experience and who qualify for a special federal license, there are H and larger engines. And engines that are not just solid rockets but have both a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer like nitrous oxide. Some of these can launch 12-foot rockets a several thousand feet into the air and carry payloads of from a few ounces to a pound or so. No, that doesn't include launching the neighbor's cat (Fluffy would turn into Icky) but there are video cameras that can go up, instrument packages to measure accelerationa nd altitude, and some people have contests launching ostritch eggs (remember those Junkyard Wars episodes?) and other items.

My largest rocket and most powerful engine weigh in at a combined 413 grams or about 14.5 ounces (very rounded), The engine is capable of lifting over 620 grams (21 ounces) so the only thing I have to worry about is keeping that darn ceter or pressure behind the center of gravity. And, the way I calculate it, I have to add about 1.6 ounces (45 grams) of weight to the nose to keep this correct. But, of course, this means that the weight and everything calculation might slip a little.

That's why I am going to do a low powered launch with an engine that weights about 4 grams less and can lift about the total combined weight of rocket and that engine. By the way... that's the rocket to the right. It stands 5 feet 3 inches in height. The little thing next to it is about 14 inches tal and indicative of beginner's level rocket kits. With the right engines and balancing I should be able to get them both up to over 1,500 feet.

The engine I will use in my test of this tall boy is an E series engine and the final go-for-altitude one will be an F series engine.

I figure that if I have correctly calculated things and the rocket performs as I expect, then i will move on to something that will eventually require that I obtain the necessary government licenses in order to buy the engines necessary to launch it.

I also have built a 1/6th scale of the AIM-54 Phoenix missile (running about 26 inches long by 2.5 inches wide (body) and 6 inches of fin span. The real ones cost about half a million... mine cost about $8.50 in miscellaneous parts.

One of my other strange designs is what looks like a stubby kid's "tee" with a baseball perched on top. I took a cardboard "can" from a pack of fancy cookies, knocked the bottom out, put large fins on it and took a styrogoam ball wrapped in paper and painted it to look sort of like a baseball. The whole thing stands just 11.25 inches tall and is about 7.75 inches at the widest fin point. In only weighs about 2 ounces so I can use practically any engine in it. Of course anything larger than about an A3-4T engine makes it cartwheen into the air. But that smaller engine pops it up about 80 feet in the air and it just tumbles back to earth. Eye-catching and fun.

So how do I feel about his being government regulated? Easy... I love it!

After 9/11 the hobby of model and sports rocketry almost ground out of existence. People who so narrowly think things through that they believed anyone could go down to Toys-R-Us, buy a rocket kit and bring down every 747 that flew overhead just about killed it.

Fortunately, and with some additional restrictions that don't really impact legitimate hobbyists, it is still here.

Model and sports rocketry are safe when practices safely, and are lots of fun. For me it isn't even in the launching; it is in the design and building of the rockets. I am working on the design and parts list of a 12 foot long by 9 inch wide rocket that I believe could fly with a large J or higher rated engine, but I would probably never fly it... just hang it from the ceiling in my garrage to make the neighbors nervous when I open the door.