We had a large gathering of kids and adults at the pre-NARCON Make-It-Take-It session on Friday morning
These five teacher/parents were selected for the Decaffeinator build
Scott gives an opening address to the attending rocketeers
And we're OFF! Decaffeinator builders begin their tasks
While the kids begin theirs. These kids are building the free FlisKits CAUTION rocket
Nice feature of this rocket is that you can color/decorate it while all of the parts are still flat!
This young girl did an exceptional job on her decorations!
And this young boy was equally proud of having his initials on his!
Meanwhile, back at the Decaffeinator table... The adults were getting frustrated as all of the kids were already finished with their kits (half CAUTION rocket and half a kit from Squirrel Works), and theirs didn't even look like a rocket yet...
These kids are nearly complete, doing some touch up and adding the recovery system.
More kids near completion, packing streamers and clean up.
Now the adults are done with the motor core and can begin work with the foam. From this point on the construction goes very quick on the Decaffeinator
As can be seen here a scant 5 minutes later. The kids loved these also, spending nearly an hour after class helping to decorate them!
Jay Apt was gracious enough to stop over to speak with the kids and describe his time in space aboard the Space Shuttle.
Carl, Jon (KermieD) and his fiancée chat and catch up.
Bruce McLawhorn at the SEMROC booth (How many people knew that stands for "South Eastern Model ROCetry"???)
A view of the vendor room. You can see our (FlisKits) booth along side SEMROC's booth.
And the crowd gathers as Jim describes the newest kit offerings from FlisKits.
Jim shows off this interesting Tres kit. It seems that it was severely damaged during a flight and the repair/rebuild converted it to a two stage...
...but not staged where you would expect it to be! 3 motor cluster first stage and single motor for the upper. Very kewl!
Micro-Classics had many very cool kits as well as many of their own scratchbuilt models. Here is a scratch built MMX version of the FlisKits/Shrox Alien8
Here is our booth. Looking more and more like a flea market display as the day wore on!
This is from our second build session with the Decaffeinator. This was during NARCON, included nearly 20 attendees and was a great success!
A big part of that success was due to the generous help from the older, more experienced modelers in attendance.
What can I say? A perfect candidate for the Deuce Bash contest if I ever saw one!
Carl... ...I can't tell if he's complaining about something, discussing something or just burping... hhmmm, tough call...
Gleda and Vern Estes visit our booth to say hi and see what's up at FlisKits. Mostly they came over to say hi to Kathy and I.
Here's Jim showing Vern a detail about one of our baffle kits.
These national events wouldn't be the same without Mike Erpelding. I have truly come to enjoy his company and finding out what he's been up to as we travel to many events that Mike also goes to.
Bill Saindon of Balsa Machining Service was a very well received vendor (as we all were)
Dave's wife Evie at the Sirius booth
Gleda Estes, Carl McLawhorn (SEMROC) and Jim chat around the table. I had placed several of my old library's on the table for folks to enjoy and it was very popular. Gleda had just finished signing her photo in one of my old Model Rocketeer publications.
Folks discussing rockets. Note that Carl Tulanko's upscale Tres and Deuce are a part of our display (Thank you Carl!) FlisKits will be holding these upscale models for the year, bringing them for display as we travel.
Art Upton at the Booster Vision booth. Art and I traded rockets this day (can't wait to build my Saturn C1)
Hamming it up, Bruce (SEMROC) and Dave (Sirius) photographed while taking pictures of each other. (yea, while classes were in session we got bored... LOL)
Vern and Gleda Estes during their keynote address. Sorry for the granny picture, but I was *way* in the back... They described the environment and operation of Estes Industries from the early 60's. It was fascinating to hear. It was even more fascinating to hear Gleda describe how nervous she was going up to the microphone. To hear her speak, you would never know it.
Jim and Kathy at the TRF (The Rocketry Forum) dinner
Mark Thell and Carl Tulanko (our dinner partners :) )
Jon (KermieD)
More TRF diners
Andy Cypher, Tater Schuld, Jasn Hommrich and Lisa Hommrich
ok, ok, ok, I *think* that's Mike Erpelding on the far right...
More (help!). Man, we need to get back to making TRF name tags... LOL
I wanted to invite Vern and Gleda to join us for dinner and they graciously accepted. I was driving the waitress crazy while taking pictures, but could NOT resist this one. Now THESE are two happy people :)
From left to right, Sheryl, Carl and Bruce McLawhorn
Vern and Gleda again.
Ok, couldn't resist again. Seems Vern has a thing for peanuts, kept dipping his hand in the jar...
Micro Classics had this great set of displays. I'm jealous. This display of 10 rockets didn't take up 10 inches of shelf space. Sheesh!
More from Micro Classics
And more...
Here is their store. He has 11 different kits hung up there and there wouldn't be room for a SINGLE Richter Recker in that space! LOL
Bruce McLawhorn strikes a pose on his way out of the vendor room. Right out of GQ...