My brother was going through his fishing tackle boxes in anticipation of the spring thaw and came across one of my old rocketry tackle boxes ! It was like unearthing a time capsule ! Note the “rocket engines” – the oldest dated 12/30/69. Last summer my dad asked my brother to clean out his garage and he recalls taking home a cardboard box with 4 tackle boxes in it. He just started looking at them the other day and voila !. As I progressed in the hobby, I recall combining my Jetex, control line & rocketry stuff into one large wooden tackle box which was really an large old singer sewing kit which met it's demise at a garage sale while i was away at college, alas. In any case, the find has inspired me to finish my Farside X and Apogee III clones now that I have some vintage chutes !. The checkered decal will look great on my Astron Delta clone as well...when i get around to building it that is !

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"If you don't try it this year, you'll just be another year older when you do."

Neat find! At least you were able to recover a part of your rocketry past, along with I'm sure some good memories.

Earl

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Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

Very cool. What a neat thing, re-connecting with something from your childhood related to the hobby. It must bring back a lot of fond memories. Congrats!

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I plan ahead that way I don't have to do anything right now.

Oh by the way, I'm not here just for the "olde" rocket discussions.

Those old parachutes are a nice find. I have a handful of estes chutes from the early mid 80'. They look way nicer than the clearish red chutes we're getting now...

Molniya, great find indeed! Love the "Estes" iron on transfer, wish I had my old t-shirt back with that logo on it!

Ooohhh...shorty motors. And notice the dipped nichrome igniter which was such an improvement over winding a little loop in some wire around the tip of a ball point pen.

I had forgotten about that old style metal Scotch tape dispenser.


Bill

They still work great. I have a few left and used a couple on the E-beam testing. I was surprised that 4 AA's set them off as quickly as it did. The dipped material was probably originally for insulation, but it kicks off some fire too.

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I love sanding.

I wish they would coat Solar igniters with something like that. I never had a misfire from shorting one of those old igniters. Clips yes, but never the igniter within the nozzle.


Bill

Usually the only Solar failures I have is when the bridge wire breaks. Most of the time the pyrogen is still there, so it looks good. Astrons won't break unless you want them to.

I have had to rework igniters at school launches where they touch together about where the plug contacts them.

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I love sanding.

Wow....
Quite a gold mine you found.

And for once I don't feel so old, in 1969 I was barely big enough to build a rocket!


Never seen the short motors before, could you provide some details?

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Layne Pemberton NAR# 83083
Mad Scientist, Minion and Owner
PembertonTechnologies.com
P.O. Box 250760
North Little Rock AR, 72225

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