The Project

Since I was young, I have always been fascinated with the military. Movies portraying our men in uniform, battling it out in far away places using the best "tools" that America could offer made for great entertainment in my youthful days an I watched in awe as they tactfully used weapons from their armory. Also, rocketry came in to play for me in the sixties when our country was involved in a real space race. My interests peaked about the time Armstrong walked on the moon and I have since paid a four time BAR visit to the world of rocketry, once as a child, then as a teenager and again when my youngest brother showed interest and now, as my children are old enough to enjoy the hobby.

Military missiles in particular have always been my favorite. I have built many models of military missiles over the years, to include the Amraam, Harpoon, Harm, Phoenix, ARM, Maverick and more to numerous to mention. In addition, I have learned a great deal regarding the design and construction of well built HPR rockets. My goal in this hobby is to be able to model in full scale the missiles I enjoy designing, building and detailing so much and, for this reason, I have decided to achieve the goal of attaining my Tripoli Level 3 certification. My choice of rockets to model is my favorite, the Hughes Aircraft AMRAAM AIM-120 advanced medium range air-to-air missile. The design was to be close to scale while maintaining a stable airframe; a few changes were made to accomodate the availability of materials, eg: I am using 7.5" Phenolic body tube as 7" is not readily available and minor modifications were made to the fin design to improve stability. This site summarizes the efforts taken to insure a strong and safe, yet as close to scale model as possible.