If you are a nerdy kid today, you have your choice of wondrous gadgets and time wasters. When we were nerdy kids, our options were somewhat limited: there was ham radio, or you could blow things up with a chemistry set. There were also model rockets. Not only were model rockets undeniably cool, but thanks to a company called Estes, you could find ready-to-go kits and gear that made it possible to launch something into the heavens, relatively speaking. But what about photographic proof? No live streams or digital cameras. But there was the Estes AstroCam 100. [Bill Engar] remembers the joy of getting film from your rocket developed.
Of course, photography was another nerdy kid staple, so maybe you did your own darkroom work. Either way, the Astrocam 110 was a big improvement over the company’s earlier Camroc. In 1965, if you wanted to fly Camroc, you had to cut a 1.5-inch piece of film in a darkroom and mount it just to get one terrible black-and-white photo. Or, you could buy the film canisters loaded if you had the extra money, which, of course, you didn’t.
You might think it would be easy to strap a consumer-grade camera to a model rocket. The problem is, the rocket is moving fast. A regular camera of the era would give you a nicely exposed blur, but that’s about it. You had to send your little 1.5-inch film to Estes, who would use special processing methods to account for the fast shutter speed.
By 1979, the company came out with the Astrocam, and it took a standard but small 110 film cartridge. This gave you lower resolution, but was easy to shoot, easy to develop, and — even better — in grainy ASA 400 color. By 1993, the camera had upgrades and could use 200-speed film.
[Bill] treats us to plenty of pictures of his boyhood neighborhood. He also mentions that you can still get 110 film if you look for it, so if you pick up a camera on eBay, you could still fly it. Or, 3D print the latest from Estes. If you want to mount some serious cameras, maybe try liquid fuel.
AstroCam 110, named after the film format.
Cool to read about this piece of hobby history. It makes you realize how times have changed. I’m pretty sure it was an awesome and sometimes frustrating hobby, hunting for that one and only perfect image. The website was a fun read (lot’s of other fun modelling stuff too).
There was a competing company and I can not recall or find the name. Century? I do recall liking their catalog. It seemed more serious and informative then Estes.
But Alas, Safe and Sane fireworks laws came to Washington State just as I was old enough for firecrackers. All forms of model and amateur rocketry were also banned. We could not even buy powdered zinc at the paint maker’s store to use with sulfur to make the rocket from Scientific American.
This was the beginning of a life-long opposition to the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution ;-)
In the mid 1970s Cox made all-plastic ready-to-fly model rockets.
I had a model of the Honest John. I thought it seemed heavy and dangerous for a model rocket. Turns out that didn’t matter so much because I lost the plastic engine retainer ring on an early flight. The makeshift replacements I tried all failed miserably. Eventually a plastic fin broke and it was done.
I had one too and a fin broke off. Estes sold bring that back as well as the V-2
Centuri is the name you are trying to remember.
Still have mine and some film that needs to be developed.
Likewise! The rockets were too expensive for me to ever finish the film! 😂
I had the Astrocam 110. Of course some of the issues were a) not having the rocket get lost (ie launch and never be found again, or simply crash) and b) saving enough money to afford to get the film developed. Of course the film cassette had like 12 or 20 pictures, deciding when to use the rocket as a handheld camera to use up the rest of the film was a matrix of cost to launch, cost to develop, chance of non-recovery and available funds, begging for a spreadsheet such as Lotus 123, which of course had not yet been invented!!
Those were the days!!
We built one in college. The very last exposure on our first roll of film…rocket went up….wind picked up….never found the rocket again. Never got to see a single photo. Bummer
The other company making Hobby rackets was Centauri.
These cameras are not new. I’ve been flying one on my rockets for several years. I started a YouTube channel, and posted four (so far) of flights using the Astrocam on an Eggtimer Dual Deploy kit, mostly flown on G80 and H97 motors.
https://youtube.com/@DanMajor-f9u
Got into it. When I was a kid. It was great. I even launch a guppy fish up in the nose cone in a plastic gumball machine, machine, plastic globe, and it made it down alive with all the water is still in it.
My brother and I built all kinds of Estes model rockets. I built the Astrocam 110 and on its maiden flight it went up about 70 feet (20 meters) turned 90 degrees, and headed into a well wooded subdivision never to be seen again! Ahhh the joys of youth.
Along with a Transroc I have an original Estes Cineroc and for some years have been meaning to measure and script the whole thing’s parts in OpenSCAD for 3D printing a replica. The lens seems pretty simple and could possibly be turned from a piece of perspex and polished. It would only for amusement porpoises as there’s no film available anymore(?).
Our rockets had about a 50% failure to find/recover rate for any given flight. Most times we launched a given rocket about 2, maybe 3 times before it blew waaaaay off course, got stuck way up in a tree or otherwise had a failure to eject the chute, caught fire (the burn proof wadding was hard to come by), blew the fins off (hot glue the fins on… bad idea!), burned the chute into a small plastic chunk… or any other number of mishaps.
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I’m pretty sure we had a zero-point-zero success rate ever flying a multi-stage rocket. The actual instructions were to hold the booster engine with one wrap of cellophane tape to facilitate separation. Zero success hahhaha.
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The rockets were available off the shelf for allowance money, so it wasn’t a big deal and they were just as fun to build as they were to fly. The motors were pretty expensive by comparison, though, and were usually the rate limiting step. C, maybe D motors were close to $20 a pack. Gasoline was well under $1 a gallon for comparison when I turned 16.
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Overall a super rad hobby in all honesty.
That was my exact exact experience as a kid too, but as an adult doing it with my kids I’ve realized you shouldn’t always use the most powerful motor that will fit. The skinny engine diameter rockets often only need an A to go almost out of sight. We recover them most ofnthr time now.
I’d like to see drones fire these into tornadoes, Sterling Colgate style
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=afhKGEFyat4
A MOGUL balloon chain with go pros along the length could be dropped as well.
Colgate was intrigued by ideas from Kurt Vonnegut’s brother about electrical aspects of tornadoes:
https://aspenphys.org/people/stirling-colgate/
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374536534/thebrothersvonnegut/
https://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-mechanics/tornadoes-tv-popular-mechanics-march1969.htm
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKMJjztsMk
One of the stronger tornadoes (Pampa) had cables in its circulation held aloft vertically:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bwm03wS1iIQ
The late researcher Chuck Doswell filmed that I believe.
FB Tatom recorded the seismic signature of the 1998 Oak Grove twister, and infrasound has been used—as per the late Doug Revelle.
More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disagreements_on_the_intensity_of_tornadoes