August 1959 American Modeler features rocketry seminar

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From The Archive by American Modeler

Sunday, June 05, 2011

"Dramatic proof of the wisdom behind an army directive authorizing service cooperative with model missileers in the series of one-a-month rocket 'seminars' held in New York and Washington with instructors from full-scale air-missile manufacturing firms and technical institutions. To test their theories and model 'birds' participants were invited to Army's Camp A.P. Hill near Bowling Green, Va., fir safety-supervised 'shoot.' Six foot 'Tycho-I' by Monroe-Woodbury Central Vally, N.Y., High School Rocket Society, reached 1 mile altitude. Capt. Brinley examines 3' high, 4" diameter model from Brooklyn," read the opening paragraph of the August, 1959 issue of American Modeler magazine article on amateur rocketry.

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Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: August 1959 American Modeler features rocketry seminar

This program was still active when I was in high school in the mid sixties. I went to four launches at Camp Picket, Virginia and met Col. Parkin mentioned in the article. Brinley also mentioned in the article wrote a very good book on amateur rockets which you can find in pdf form on the internet. We had a fine time with these "model missiles" back then, mostly zinc-sulfer micrograin but we did one using epoxy as a fuel-binder by convincing Shell Chemical to donate the epoxy which was new and expensive at the time. I went on to fly many amateur and model rockets and later to work for the predecessor of AMROC called ARC Technologies and then Starstruck. We launched the "Dolphin" test hybrid rocket in 1984. This is the same technology that is used by the "Spaceship One". Now I just launch rockets for my wife's fourth grade class.