November 8th, 1998 began as a brisk Autumn day in Orangeburg, South Carolina for Jim Mitchell of Dynamic Propulsion Systems. It marked the second day of the Tripoli Experimental launch and the day Jim's massive Nike Smoke would take to the skies. I witnessed the prep and flight of a Dynamic Propulsion Systems N4750 in the best built Nike Smoke I had ever seen.

Mark Newton thought the Fat Boy was a neat kit for some time, but the idea to hyper-ize it hit him when he was looking at Yitah Wu’s rocket fleet on the ‘net. Yitah built a Fat Boy for two motors, and he used different length tubes for each one, so he could deploy two recovery devices at different times by simply picking different delays. Mark liked the concept, so shamelessly stealing it, he set out to build a multi-motor Fat Boy.

Andrew Waddell began thinking of this project shortly after getting into high-power flying. Waddell has always been a Saturn V fanatic, and wanted something bigger than most.   This project is 1/52 scale, matched to PML 7.62" tubing used for the main booster airframe. In September of 1997 he began laying out the project. 

Lawrence Tulissi's name started appearing in High Power Rocketry magazine in 1995, attending Sullivan Lake high power launches in Canada. A guy with a passion for Black Brant rockets, Lawrence tells the story about his latest, and largest, in the series.

This is the story about a rocketry club with a can-do attitude who was looking to do things in a big way. The V2 idea was conceived during a monthly meeting and started life as an airplane tip tank. Since it looked so much like a V2, we use it as amold and started the group project known as Shamu, the Killer V2.

When I lived in Dallas, I had the pleasure of hanging out with numerous individuals, some more dubious than others, but all of whom enjoyed a sincere love for the hobby of high power rocketry. My first opportunity to participate in a major event was at the Heart of Texas I launch in July of 1995. There I met two of the individuals pictured below.