Winter is much harder where I live now and flying throughout is surely a formula for getting frost bite, so I decided to have some rocketry fun by purchasing a video. I decided to go with Point 39 Production's LDRS-XVIII. Two hours of highpowered rocketry fun with a variety of activity to help you feel part of the LDRS event.

The video starts out with some historical footage to help set the tone. Space travel with the ultimate goal of landing on the moon motivated many individuals and even an entire country (or two) to push the limits of both man and machine. Model rocketry may help remind people of those times. Or it may simply be an awesome sport-hobby allowing creativity, details, and design to be turned into small or large rockets.

Next the video takes you to the launching site of Homer Hickam Jr. and Quentin Wilson of the "Rocket Boys" (October Sky) fame. My video even came with a small sample of coal dust from Coalwood, West Virginia. There is a brief interview with Quentin Wilson, who was out there flying his "Miss Riley" which he called a toy, compared to his days of activity.

Then to get us started into the actual LDRS event, Point 39 takes us on a brief tour of Argonia, Kanasas. It brings out some of the Aeronatical and Space related industries that are part heritage of the Argonia area. A quick tour of the hotel headquarters and then out to the site where there were over 400 fliers over the 5 day event.

Let the launches begin . . . .

And they did. Point 39 takes us through each of the days capturing many, many launches with a real focus on the big ones. My favorite "big ones" include John Ritz's "Flying Tetrahedron" on M-power and Darren Owen's and Andy Schecter's Fat Boys. You can see that these are just a few of the big events as you look over the image to the right.

The video is professionally done and the sound and images are clear. I really enjoyed the two camera shot of each launch allowing you to see all the flame and smoke from the initial ignition and then the flight path into the sky. Exceptional camera work was also noticed as it stayed focus on some of these birds all the way to apogee.

Point 39 even captures some of the mishaps of rocket flying including a K-Motor CATO. Also a beautiful, scratch-built, staged, D-powered WAC Corporal with a Tiny Tim booster that a young man had built. This rocket took off, but the second stage never ignited. (my suggestion is that he needed a coupler tube to help channel the hot particles up to the sustainer . . . his model had at least a 1" air-gap between the two sections)

Two other highlights that I really enjoyed viewing. Doug Gerrard's M-powered, 11 camera, "My Mind's Eye". You may recall the article on this bird at RocketryOnline. The pictures and the way Point 39 viewed them were outstanding. The other is the on-board footage from the V2 flight. (The date function on their on-board camera was not set right showing 1996). The sound, the view and everything was great. I have watched that section several times.

All-in-all, a well put together video, priced right, and with nearly all the excitement of actually being there. If I can't get to the next LDRS, then I'm sure I'll buy the next video just to fight those winter blues!