WENDOVER, Nevada USA — Day One of LDRS 17 is history and it was an exciting opening to the Tripoli Rocketry Association's national launch, Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships, or LDRS for short. This year's launch is the first year the launch had been held on the Bonneville Salt Flats, home of many legendary high speed records, and a fitting location for such a display of high power rocketry.

Day One started a little slowly as many rocketeers were to arrive all during the day, yet quite a number of rocketeers took advantage of the wide open landscape and clear skies burning their favorite long burning motors. Motors not normally seen were being pulled out of the mothballs for long jaunts into the blue Bonneville skies. K250's, K185's, even a K550 to a K250 two stage flight! Jerry Vaughn even brought out his last K125 single use 98mm motor and promised to show everyone its double-digit burn time later in the week.

One of the big attractions was the Manufacturer's Forum, held after the days activities had ended back at the host hotel's conference center. In the photo to the left, Scott Bartel introduced Hypertek's latest monster hybrid setup.

But that wasn't all! Scott also announced a phenominal new motor system he is working on and will soon be available for market.

These new motors are a break-through in new concepts of reusable motors. A graphite nozzle is located in place by a unique injection-molded plastic aft closure, and the motor's liner is also integrated into this one-piece assembly. That's right, the aft closure, the nozzle and the liner is a one piece unit.

In the photo to the right, you see this assembly on the left side of the picture. On the right is the fuel grain of the single grain G motor.

Below that is the one piece delay/ejection closure. The fuel grain slips in the liner, you snap on the ejection closure and screw it into the aluminum casing in the center of the photo.

When you are done, you unscrew the assembly and through everything except the casing! And the aft closure comes with a threaded area for attaching to a positive motor retention adapter Black Sky will also market.

Another neat Black Sky device is a new pyrotechnic release mechanism.

The unit is designed to be used in a dual recovery setup where you want to deploy the main and drogue parachute out of the same end as opposed to splitting the rocket apart in several locations. The drogue is tethered in place by a retention bracket.

When the main chute is ready for release, an electic match ignites a pyrotechnic charge which releases the retention bracket, thereby releasing the tethered drogue to finish pulling the main chute out.

The "Doc of LOC", Ron Shultz, presented the LOC/Precision concept of "TWT" or "Tube Within a Tube" of reinforcing the fin area of their large rocket kits.

He also displayed their new "Fin Lock" technique they use for fin placement and retention on their new rockets using the LOC 5.38" plastic tailcone.

Frank Uroda presented a new concept kit PML will be releasing within weeks based on the 50's Sci-Fi influence. Their new model, based on their 6" tubing has fiberglass nose and tail cones, G-10 fins and fin tip pods.

PML also announced a new electronics relationship with Transolve. A new altimeter is being readied for public release which has the basic dimensions of the Adept ALTS25, but has a built-in NiCad battery which is rechargable with a separate battery charger.

 Ed LaCroix and Gary Rosenfield of AeroTech covered their new product lines, including the new 76mm motors and reload kits. Pictured in the foreground is their 98mm Turbo-Hybrid motor, a real 'grunt' producer for them.

Additional reload information was covered, giving flyers a heads-up of things to come in 1999.