I'm one of the "old guys" born right at the dawn of the space age...barely a year before Sputnik. Yes, I can remember things like John Glenn's first flight, the Gemini Program, and manically watching (and recording on audio tape) every minute that I could of the coverage of the moon landings of Apollo. These are the years I most fondly remember and constituted the wild-growth years of model rocketry which coincided with the heyday of the Apollo years.

I got my start in 1963. My first model rocket was an Estes Scout purchased with a dollar (which bought the kit AND the motor!) that I had earned working at a produce stand of a childhood friend (well, it was his mom's produce stand) during summer vacation at the "wilderness" of southwest Houston...near a subdivision in the "boonies" called Sharpstown (devotees of the early U.S. space program will realize the significance of the community). Across the street from Sharpstown was a giant (for that time) shopping mall on the two lane highway (I remember thinking at the time, "Why would they put a mall like this in the middle of nowhere?" As a "little kid" it seemed to be a long way from Houston.) and in that mall was a hobby shop that remained a favorite stop through my high-school years, through my marriage...then just a few years ago, it was gone (though the mall is still there, bigger than ever and long-ago buried deep within the ever-expanding city limits of Houston).

Most of my school years saw me accompanied by the ever-present Estes catalog, a sketch pad full of designs, and various publications like Model Rocketry magazine, Model Rocket News, and the Handbook of Model Rocketry. I remember getting a couple of my science teachers in intermediate and high school hooked on model rocketry.

Then, in the late '60's, I discovered motorcycles and the art of racing...

Fortunately, model rocketry and model building were not shelved passions during my racing years (which spanned from '68 to '83...too long for any sensible person). Frequently, if I knew a racetrack was located near a good flying field, my rockets went with me on my weekend jousts on the two-wheeled battlefield. During my high-school years I was one busy teenager actively building and flying model rockets, racing motorcycles, working in both a motorcycle shop and as a machine operator in a large machine shop...and chasing girls (though not as successfully as my buddies...it was after the high school years that I became somewhat proficient in that art and nabbed my first and only wife).

During my motorcycle years I managed to nurture a serious interest in scale model rocketry and won my first scale model rocket event in 1970 with a scratch-built Soviet Vostok (built using G. Harry Stine's 1969 data in 'Model Rocketry' magazine...the news clip at left appeared in either the Houston Chronicle or the Houston Post...time blurs such things when you get old like me...). During this time, I became sort of a "groupie" to the Apollo-NASA Section of the NAR (National Association of Rocketry) and attended my first NARAM (NARAM 12, the annual national model rocket championships of the NAR) at Johnson Space Center (I lived within bicycling distance of the center and spent many weekends just roaming around the place...) though I didn't join the NAR until 1976.

In 1977 it was only chance that early one Sunday morning while I was driving along NASA 1 and across the Armand Bayou/Clear Lake bridge to pick up racing buddy who lived in a community adjacent to JSC that I saw through the fog what I first thought was an "ocean liner" that had somehow become lost moving unusually close to the shoreline. That "ocean liner" turned out to be one of the large barges used to transport the stages of the Saturn V and I was witnessing the arrival of the first of the stages at JSC (they had a special dock on Clear Lake which had direct access to the Intracoastal Canal system used by NASA for movement of large components). Needless to say, my day of racing was cancelled as I hurried home and retrieved my camera to document the event. I made it a point to be onsite for the arrival or movement of several other Saturn components.

I was one of the founders of the NASA/Houston Section of the NAR (which survives today as the NASA-Houston Rocket Club) way back in 1976 which also began my association with Don Carlson who was then editor of the NAR's "Model Rocketeer" magazine. Soon our club had members such as Rob Justis, Frank Bittinger, Ron Goforth and others. I teamed with Rob in NAR competition and assisted him in the construction of his 1980 Internats scale Saturn V. My exposure to Rob's Internats model led me to a position on the 1983 US Internats Team (spending a couple of weeks in Europe that I will never forget). Frank Bittinger was the ever-present NASA-employee-type who I remember was a fountain of news about NASA's trials and tribulations. I still see Frank from time to time at rocket meets. Ron served his sentence in the hobby as the NAR's National and World Records chairman (a position I filled after him) as well as the contest director for NARAM 25.

I began a stint as editor of American Spacemodeling (it changed name from "The Model Rocketeer" with my first issue...though I had nothing to do with the name change) beginning in 1984 and continuing to the early '90's. It was during my tenure that full color and glossy paper became the standards of the magazine. I (foolishly) handled just about everything from graphics, layout, writing, bookkeeping, ad management and sales, hobby shop distribution...I even did the "lick-and-stick" of address labels, sorted, bagged, and delivered to the post office...all from my living room and garage. I was also a member of the NAR Board of Trustees during that time. I would have to say that I am probably NOT fondly remembered by some of my fellow Board members...that's a story for another time (if ever).

Soon after the loss of the shuttle Challenger in 1986 some of the rocketry types in my area and I had begun to get together to fly rockets (by now I was on the west side of Houston...about 40 miles from the NASA/Houston club). In 1988 my wife (Connie), Terry White (current and long-time NAR Southwest Regional Contest Director), and myself formed the Challenger 498 rocket club which remained active off and on until 2003. Between 1988 and 2003 Terry White and I (along with others such as Dan Stuettgen) competed in NAR competition on behalf of Challenger 498. Since most of the "members" of Challenger were Compaq employees (most of which became "former" Compaq employees after the HP acquisition in 2003) we sort of wound down and let the NAR Charter lapse. I discovered soon thereafter that Challenger 498 was "picked up" by another group of modelers a few miles away and Challenger 498 continues today (though its current members are largely oblivious of the 15 prior years of Challenger's history they do fly at the same field that Dan Stuettgen had been instrumental in acquiring a few years ago).

Once my racing years, my heavy involvement with the production of the American Spacemodeling magazine, and NAR politics behind me I had much more time to devote to modeling building. Scale models, Sci-fi models, and boost/rocket gliders are my passions with NAR Scale and Sport Scale competition being the focus of most of my attention. Though the Saturn V and Soviet vehicles are really my forte it has been with the Mercury Redstone that I have made my mark in NAR competition wining Team Sport Scale at the NAR Nationals with various incarnations of the Gus Grissom's ride (Liberty Bell 7) in 1998, 2000, and 2002. There has also been a Saturn V and a Vanguard in there, too. What makes my scale model rockets different is that they all tend to be very large, very light (all under the model rocket weight limit of 3.3 pounds), and feature both unique construction and some interesting electronic and mechanical "gizmos." Browse this site to find out more on these topics. My 2000 Mercury Redstone went on to win, out of about 600 entries,  Best Spacecraft, Best "Other" and Best-of-Show at the Annual IPMS show in Austin that year (IPMS is a "plastic/static" model organization). As far as I know, this is the first flying model rocket of any kind to take such honors at an IPMS show.

My career has taken a variety of strange twists and turns, all of the interesting and enjoyable and all leading to bigger and better things which somehow went full-circle from a childhood rocketry hobby, through 15 years in motorcycles and the motorcycle industry (as a racer and Yamaha service manager), through almost 13 years self-employed running a graphic arts company (and computer support to the graphics industry), 7 years with HP/Compaq, and then 2003-2005 being affiliated with the conservation efforts for the Saturn V vehicles at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL.

It was my involvement in model rocketry and my specific interest in the Apollo program and the Saturn V that led to from my building Saturn V models in the 1960's to also building models and working on the real thing the past few years.

My "career" with Compaq was terminated somewhat suddenly in July 2003 after its acquisition by HP (such is big business...). I decided to lick my wounds and take an extended vacation. It was on that vacation and over a thousand miles from home that I heard from someone in the hobby that I had been referred to Conservation Solutions Inc (CSI) as a model builder. They were searching for someone to build a large Saturn V model to assist in their bid to do the conservation work on the Saturn V at Johnson Space Center. When I returned home I contacted CSI and was soon contracted to build two 1:72 scale Saturn V models. In the course of a few e-mail exchanges with Joe Sembrat (CSI President) he became aware that I new a bit more about the Saturn than just building models. I soon sent him a DVD full of photos that I had taken on an ongoing basis of the JSC Saturn since its arrival in 1977. That led to more questions and, discovering I had CAD abilities and a bit of knowledge about how the Saturn was built I was hired to do a series of 3D and 2D drawings that would be used for documenting the vehicle. In early 2004 I was asked to meet with Mr. Sembrat and some of the folks that would be working onsite on the Saturn and that led to me becoming part of the assessment crew that would crawl under, over, and in the vehicle to document its condition, inside and out from tip to tail.

Since I had been a voracious collector of data on the Saturn for over 35 years and knew the details of the specific Saturn at JSC I was soon pressed into service accompanying the various contractors and engineers that would also be employed in the conservation and repairs of the vehicle. Since I also had writing and graphics skills, I pressed into service to do the physical production of several rather large color/glossy assessment reports. My services were also used to produce slideshows and speak at a number of conservation industry gatherings (I can just imagine what folks would think of my almost "backwoods" Texas accent). It was also discovered that I could swing a hammer and I was pressed into service to assist with various mechanical operations on the vehicle such as the demating of the LES, CM, and Service Modules (spending many long hours tediously removing hundreds upon hundreds of seized and corroded bolts and screws in some incredibly confined spaces). One of the most "awesome" experiences I had was when I opened the "dollar cover" on the S-IVB stage hydrogen tank and peered in with the first set of human eyes since it was sealed up at the factory almost 35 years earlier (though the tanks of the other stages were larger inside, the initial thrill of that first tank "cracking" was the most memorable). Certainly the most hair-raising experiences came prior to the erection of the building around the vehicle when I would be suspended for hours at a time high above the stages by a rather spindly (for a "fat guy" like me) crane while the hot Texas summer sun and rather high winds gave me sunburn and an acute awareness of "motion."

In early 2005 CSI landed the contract to do the conservation on the Saturn V at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. I made the initial trip to document the differences between it and the JSC Saturn (we knew the two vehicles were different and we needed a leg up in preparing documentation about features of the vehicles that were not common) and I spent a couple of rain-drenched days doing the best I could to photograph and measure the beast. Two or three weeks later I was back onsite at USSRC doing, for several weeks, the same thing I did a year earlier on the JSC Saturn...crawling under, over, and in the various components of the grand-daddy of Saturn V vehicles.

The highlight of my association with the USSRC conservation project was a few months after I had more or less completed my work there that I got to return to do a presentation on the CSI conservation work as part of the annual Apollo Reunion at USSRC and shared the stage with Wally Shirra (after stumbling and nearly depositing myself in his lap as I took the stage).

The History Channel began work in 2004 on a documentary on the JSC conservation project as a part of their "Save Our History" series. The segment eventually was called "Apollo: The Race Against Time." I sort of became the "Saturn V guy" to the History Channel folks while they were onsite at JSC. As the months passed I provided some technical information and unwittingly got my "15 minutes of fame" during the show. I was surprised to see that I got a couple of end credits for contributing to the show including one as cameraman (a few chunks of video that I shot with my trusty Handycam escaped the cutting room floor and were presented and credited to CSI and the Smithsonian). Ironically, "Apollo: Race Against Time" aired at precisely the day and the very hour that I was doing the presentation at USSRC and I didn't get to see it until about six weeks later when the History Channel folks sent me a tape of the show.

I left the conservation projects in October 2005. But my "Saturn" career hasn't ended and has taken yet another couple of twists. Over the past few months I have been traveling and collecting even more Saturn V info (in fact, I probably collected over twice as much data in the six months afterh leaving the project as I had collected in the previous 35 years by visiting far off locations, scanning thousands of pages of documents, speaking with and exchanging e-mails with many of the "behind the scenes" engineers and workers [that are the unsung heroes of Apollo] who actually worked on the Saturn in the 50's, 60's and early 70's.) I expanded my "Saturn" horizons a bit by sitting with a couple of engineers who actually worked on the NASA side of the Nova vehicle studies in the late '50's and early '60's (and who informed me the "popular" Nova design, the one depicted in Jack Hagerty's "Spaceship Handbook" was more a "sparkplug" design for PR and inspirational purposes and was never a design considered by NASA for anything other than that). Hopefully, within a couple of years I will pull all that information together into a coherent and unique look at the Saturn V (and possibly Nova). I've begun work on the latest of many Saturn V models that I hope will be my "ultimate." And, looping back on my career track a bit, I am again in the computer business as a Network Administrator.

One other tidbit concerning my tenure with CSI is that I got to work on doing some conservation work on a big section of the Titanic that had been retrieved from the bottom of the Atlantic a couple of years before. We had moved the CM and LES to a warehouse near Houston Hobby airport to perform the conservation work on them there. CSI had earlier moved the Titanic piece to that location (I still don't know why the Titanic piece ended up in Houston, of all places). I spent many days disassembling the CM with the "Titanic" literally only eight or ten feet away. I admit that I was rather indifferent to it (other than my passing interest in the Titanic history) but when I was asked to work on the piece it suddenly became "magic."  I would be terribly neglectful not to thank Joe Sembrat for the CSI experience...and some wonderful folks like Patty Miller (an even bigger NASCAR nut than me), Jee Skavdahl, and Jerry Pullin that I got to work with on an extended basis.

So, that's my story as far as my hobby and related careers go. I hope you find something of interest (or perhaps inspiration) at this site and hopefully you will return to it many times in the future.