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My background is in mechanical and electrical engineering and my hobbies include genealogy, photography, and of course, rocketry. I have been involved in rockets since 1972 so I am NOT a Born Again Rocketeer (BAR). I entered High Power Rocketry in 1988 and knew it was what I was looking for. I found the motors I needed to combine my hobbies of photography and rocketry to launch camera payloads in a rocket. I almost exclusively fly camera rockets. This web site was developed to show off some of my photographs. Because my job has transferred me all over the country, I have been fortunate to fly camera rockets in many different states. I will try to include the location and year each picture was taken. Perhaps you can recognize your launch field.

I am a member of Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA #568) and the National Association of Rocketry (NAR #29639). I certified level 3 in 1999 at LDRS with a 110 pound, 17 foot tall rocket called My Mind's Eye. It had eleven cameras on board and flew on a M1939 motor.

The pictures on this page are from a Science Fair that I won when I was in High School. (Click on them for a larger image and additional comments.) I wanted to measure the speed of a rocket and at that time there was no such thing as accelerometers for on board a model rocket. My original attempt was to launch the rocket from the top of the tower and trail the rocket with a paper tape. The paper tape would pass through a device that would mark the paper at some time interval. Then the velocity could be calculated. It didn’t work too well. I knew that the paper would hold the rocket back, but that was just an error of doing the experiment. But I didn’t anticipate that the paper would break.

Then I tried to have the rocket launch on a rail and imbedded in the rail were microswitches. These microswitches were wired up to replace the switches on two digital stop watches. It allowed me to start and stop the stop watches as the rocket ascended on the rail. Perhaps that’s where I started thinking about replacing the shutter switch on a camera with a relay to trigger the camera?