BUFFALO, New York USA — In July of this year, American Journey, a series of the Travel Channel, began taping a series about a spectacular behemoth high power rocketry project called Team Aries, a 26" diameter scale model of the actual Aries sounding rocket that was created by Ray Halm, Andy Schecter and Jim Sekol, of Buffalo, New York, including Eric Ohmit who built and flew the proto type on various motors to figure out stability as well as lots of help from various members of the Buffalo Rocket Society Inc. The project flew at this past year's LDRS launch in Argonia, Kansas.

Large Team Aries rocket.

A film crew from Beyond Productions covered their journey from Buffalo to Argonia to fly this massive rocket, which featured a cluster of four M1939W RMS™ motors from AeroTech.

The rocket, built of industrial Sonotube covered in fiberglass featured four 98mm motor mounts, a custom turned foam nosecone and flew from the ultra-trick rail launcher of Jim Stanlick. 

One huge smoke trail. Photo: P. Lantz

Once the Aries was loaded and thrust into the air, final adjustments were made to the rail, electronics were armed and igniters installed.

Quentin Wilson of Rocket Boys fame pressed the button after a 5 count. The Aries streaked into the sky, turned slightly into the wind and cruised to an altitude of 4780 feet.

Peter Lantz took a tell-tale photograph of the Aries launch from the regular rangehead.

Visible in the photo to the left, you can see the 30 foot tall tower for the Mercury Redstone to the left. Compared to the gigantic exhaust plume of the four M1939 motors, it appears dwarfed! Additional pictures of the Aries launch is located in a separate photo gallery at: Aries Photos.

The program is one hour long and split into two 30 minute segments. One segment is called "Rocketman" while the other "The BBQ Brigade" and the broadcast schedule is slated for January 23, 2000 at 10PM and January 29, 2000 at 7PM.

This marks the second filming of a rocket involving Halm, whose full scale ARCON rocket was covered for a feature spot during a NAR launch in Muncie, Indianna.

The six inch diameter rocket used an AeroTech M1419W RMS™ to lift an onboard video camera into the sky.