As large as the Internet is, it's strange to end up geographically in similar places, yet this Website Review finds us back in Birmingham, Alabama where Clark Word lives and earns a living as a graphic artist while also attending college. 

Word, age 40, is a member of both the National Association of Rocketry and the Tripoli Rocketry Association as well as a member of the United States Parachute Association, where he enjoys hanging under a parachute just like his rockets do.  He is also affiliated with the Music City Missile Club, Huntsville Area Rocket Society and is a founding member of the Phoenix Missile Works, another Alabama rocketry club.

Clark started rocketry like many others his age but never got involved enough to consider himself a BAR.  As a child, he had a couple of rockets but no real adult supervision, so with less than 10 flights under his belt, he moved on to other things.  He stated that during his childhood, he lived across the street from the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center and would sneak in the park and spend entire Saturdays looking at rockets and dreaming of space flight.

Clark Word with his BSD 3" Horizon ready to go.

He never forgot his affinity for space and rockets and almost 30 years later finds himself building and flying rockets for the past three years.  According to Clark, "It's definitely in my blood now."  He also has volunteered time as a TARC mentor for 2 of those 3 years.

As a flier, he spends most of his time flying high power, but every now and then he'll modify a low power kit, like the Estes BLU-97B Cluster Bomb rocket, and fly it on AeroTech E30's.  More recently, he modified a Blue Ninja and flew it on F motors.  That was probably an amazing flight!

All of that time in the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center must have really made an impact.  When asked about his favorite rocket, Word stated it was a tie — between the Saturn V, because it got man to the moon, and in his words, "the mother of all clusters," the Vostok.  Running a close second is the AIM 54 Phoenix missile.

It becomes apparent after talking to Clark that he can't leave well enough alone.  By that, I mean he likes to scratch build and any kits he assembles turns into a kit-bash.  He seems to enjoy hardening rockets to take more thrust.

I asked Clark what one valuable tip he'd pass on to today's hobbyist, and he said, "Take your time getting your level certifications. I took a year between my L1 and L2 cert flights and enjoyed burning up a ton of I motors."  He claims to have learned a lot over that year, flying, looking at what others were doing through the Internet and attending launches.

Here, Lucky Charm is catching some G's on another succsessful launch.

Everyone has that favorite project that almost makes you misty-eyed, and Word is no different.  His was a 4.25" scratch built model named "Lucky Charm," made from a length of carpet tube and outfitted with a custom Balsa Machining nose cone and four fins made of aircraft birch plywood, standing 62" high.  On the tip of the nose cone was a U.S. Coast Guard-rated rescue strobe that made night launches possible.

He flew it at Southern Thunder 2004 in Manchester, Tennessee and during that launch, his uncle found what Clark said was "the biggest four leaf clover I have ever seen."  They taped the clover to the airframe with wide clear packing tape and it rode the thunder for six launches that weekend.

His level 2 bird, he flew Lucky Charm for another 25 or so flights before he miscalculated setting the delay on a Cesaroni Pro38 motor and ended up zippering the airframe.  Lucky Charm is now officially retired, but he still hasn't forgiven himself.

His most memorable flight came from a rocket he called "Double Vision," what he termed "a very bashed" 4 inch DG&A Armageddon which flew its maiden flight on a Cesaroni Pro54 L730. Clark said, "I actually worked on the rocket up to the point where we put her on the rail. Talk about stressing out, I had started construction two weeks earlier and it took all I had to have her ready by launch time and we still had to swap out a rail button at the launch pad itself because I had compressed it."  Hind sight is a perfect, well, 20/20.

Turning our attention to Word's web site, the thing that makes is stand out besides his projects there is his video and multimedia collection.  One of the things that he really enjoys is videos and he has a lot to share with the viewer.  But Clark has worked on a couple of great multimedia projects that I think deserve attention.

The National Association of Rocketry's Educational CD is available online for you to view at your leisure. Over 700 MB of hobby rocketry goodies.

First is the National Association of Rocketry Educational CD.  This is the web version of the same educational CD that teachers can get free from the NAR.  In reality, it's a complete web site of its own, with 700 MB of material. 

For the novice there is a lot of good information on the site, but there is some stuff for the advanced rocketeer as well, such as plans and formulas for building an altitude chamber created by Chuck Pierce.  Teachers can request a free copy of the CD from the NAR at: http://www.nar.org/teachercd.html while the regular reader can surf the web-based site at:

     http://www.2020vertical.com/nar_edu_cd_dev/index.html

Second is an inspirational/historical video Clark created for use in the classroom entitled "Dreams."  This is a professional quality video and is a must-have for educators teaching the subject in schools.

Third, there are a multitude of videos produced by Word where he has sojourned around the Southeast and Midwest capturing the spirit of hobby rocketry through the viewfinder of his video camera.  He has video productions from Southern Thunder, NASA Student Launch Initiative, Midwest Power 3 and other launches.

Clark's reasoning for creating 20/20 Vertical was to have a site to put up his on-board videos but then it turned into something bigger than him or his rockets. Now, it's kind of like everybody's site. Clark said, "If I film your rocket at a launch it will most likely end up on the 'net on my site. I video tape at almost any launch I go to and I have video taped the NASA SLI launches for the last 2 years as well. People enjoy watching videos of their rockets flying and I enjoy being able to provide that for them."

Some of Clark's video work.

Future plans call for a complete redesign of his site.  The site will contain everything it has now but he will add a section for his skydiving adventures and a section for aircraft and things aircraft-related. The NAR Educational CD will get it's own link in the main navigation instead of where it is now. The navigation will remain simple. Just some new areas will be added and the look will be different with fresh new graphics.

Word only had two desires when asked what he would like to see available to rocketry enthusiasts via the web:

1. "More launch videos! I would really like to see more videos of rockets on chutes. Since I started skydiving I have a new appreciation for the parachute. Now I want to oversize my chutes for my rockets."
2. "I would also like to see rocketry related sites remain user friendly. There are a lot of good sites out there with a lot of info, but a few of them are a pain to use."

Slide on over to 20/20 Vertical and give it a browse.  If you are a video lover, there's a reward at the end of the visit.

20/20 Vertical: http://www.2020vertical.com/

09-23-2006 12:53 AM  #1
crontab Certified Level Three   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 204	Hey, Clark, you did a really good job on that Dreams video. Keep up the good work!