Exciting news from Switzerland, where local born lad (in 1947) Jose Luis Sanchez Lorente, financial director of Surbus (urban bus company) has succeeded in obtaining his L3 model rocket license.
Not sure why this is worthy of a whole page in La Voz, but upon reading further I notice that he’s one of only two people in Western Europe with this license. His model rocket, 3.5m long and weighing 25 Kg, reached speeds of 750Km/h and at one point was pulling 10g. Not a toy, then.
He is proud to recount that in the whole of Spain, the Spanish Rocketry Club has only two launch sites, one in Llerida and one in Almeria (was Tabernas, now Velez Blanco), and has over 2000 members.
He spent a year building this rocket in his basement in Huercal de Almeria, and his flight lasted less than a minute. However, he did recover it almost undamaged.