Nostalgia

Nostalgia. What does that word mean to you? A yearning for a simpler time from when you were younger? A desire to own something that for some reason you couldn't in times past? An appreciation of technology that long ago was state of the art?

For me, the word nostalgia meant a little bit of all of those when I ran across Jim Z's website of old rocket plans. I'd been hearing rocketeers talk of the site for some time and thought I would take a look. I quickly found the first rockets I'd ever had. An Estes Astron Alpha (has anybody in rocketry not had an Alpha of some vintage?) A Skyhook. Talk about a minimum diameter hot rod! (BT30 body tube? What's that?) An X-Ray (love that clear payload section), and an Apogee II two stager (the best of both worlds: minimum diameter and that clear payload section!). And a little later on, a Skydart boost glider( I won't bore you with recovery stories about the Skydart, but I still have the scars on both ankles from the barb wire fence my brother had to cut me out of.)

Ah yes. The simpler times of my youth, when high technology grew on trees. Actually was trees. Balsa wood was what nose cones and fins were made of then. Plastic was for clear payload sections and not much else. Good old Elmers glue was the standard bonding agent of the day. Rockets were as simple as my Skyhook, the proverbial three fins and a nose cone, or as complicated and racy as the much lusted after but quite unobtainable Mars Snooper or Orbital Transport or the king of them all, THE MARS LANDER.

Plans for these and many other rockets, mostly Estes, but also some Centuri and a few from MRC and others are there waiting on Jim Z's website for you to download and bring back to life. Estes kits were very good about giving you a parts list complete with part numbers and all. With other manufacturers, you may have to read between the lines and do a little research to figure out dimensions of parts. Jim's web site also has copies of entire vintage catalogs so if the parts list says you need a BT-20B body tube, you look it up in a catalog of that era and see that it's an 8 2/3 inch body tube of BT-20 size. Need a BNC-50K nose cone? Pop over to Balsa Machining Service's site and they have one listed and ready for you to order as well as reproductions of most sizes and types of popular classic nose cones. Need body tubing or centering rings? Totally Tubular has them from smaller than Quest MicroMax to larger than BT80 including three sizes of proprietary Centuri tubing. Some parts like balsa nose blocks and transitions you'll have to make yourself but the old Estes catalogs tell you all of the dimensions you need to know. You'll still have to do some detective work (meaning research and scrounging) to come up with some parts and dimensions, but that's part of the fun too.

I lost my Skyhook on its second flight on a C6-7 and lost my Apogee II on its first flight on a C6-0, C6-7 combination. I knew the Apogee successfully staged because I found the booster. The Alpha had a much longer life before it was lost on another one of those powerful C motors (this was before the Estes "Mighty D" and those E's and F's in the Centuri catalog might as well have been on another planet for all the chance I had of coming up with any. I guess I liked high performance then just as I do now.) I think my parents may still have the Skydart packed away somewhere and I can't remember what ever happened to the X-Ray. But I've got a stack of plans I've downloaded and parts for these and a dozen rockets I used to have or have lusted after and you'll see 'em soon at upcoming launches.

Why not check out Jim Z's website and find out what nostalgia means to you.

Web addresses:

Jim Z: http://www.dars.org/jimz/rp00.htm

Balsa Machining Service: http://user.mc.net/~bms

Totally Tubular: http://www.semiresources.com/rockets/tt.html