"Shown in color on the cover, Jetex-powered missile makes a highly unusal 'space age' project. Works!" This is the introduction to the article "Two Stage Rocket" by Paul E. Del Gatto, who's son, Paul, Jr., is on the cover of this August 1958 issue of Model Rocket News. I wonder where Paul, Jr. is today? Many of the readers, seeing the cover on the previous From The Archive segment requested these plans after there presence was disclosed on the cover of that issue. Well, here they are.

The article covers the construction of a two-stage, Jetex-propelled, rocket using model airplane technologies — spars, stringers, planking and lots of balsa wood. The model could be easily reconstructed today using the original specifications or could be converted to modern model rocketry technology using cardboard tubes, balsa parts and thin plywood bulkheads.

The article has been captured and converted to Adobe PDF format to share with the readers. Four pages in length, the article is 505K in size. To view the article, click here. You will need Adobe Reader to view the article. If you do not have Adobe Reader, a copy may be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/.

Some readers have commented about the readability of these recent archives, thinking the file compression has been set too high. No changes to file compression have been made in the construction of these archives when compared to previous archives, just the procedures for preparing them. Previous archives have been of fairly small magazines, whose pages were usually much smaller than a standard 8" by 11" sheet of paper. To compensate, they were scanned at a 200% rate and then resized to 8" by 11". These archives, being close to that size already, were not initially oversized. Only the discoloration of the yellowed pages were photographically adjusted, which sometimes causes readability issues itself.

Part of the challenge we face in the hobby is the archival and preservation of these old sources of information on our hobby. Adobe PDF format makes a great medium for the collection and storage of these types of documents because of its portability and cross-platform approach.

We would like to extend our thanks to Sean Lannan for sharing this document with the readers. If you have an article you would like to share with the readers, send email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  with details on the article you have to share. Previous submissions have consisted of submitting the magazine in whole, which were be returned upon completion of the scanning process.