Wow - this has become a truly hostile thread. Pity. The website IS very cool. As a hobbyist who got started "post-K-Kit" (1979), I'd love to see it go further - perhaps include the 1200-series kits. But that's easy to say when I'm not the one doing the legwork!

I haven't been on YORF for long, so I haven't seen Mike's apparently egregious "nannying" attempts in the past. Regardless, reading these posts, I'm left with the impression he had the rather chilling experience of having THE giant of the rocketry industry come at him with lawyers. "Stop making clones of our kits or we'll sue the pants off of you!!" Is that about right, Mike? It's enough to make anybody sensitive to the legal side of the rocketry business.

Estes is definitely sensitized to the law. I talked with those fine folks at the NARAM in Pueblo. I congratulated them on bringing back classic kits, and naturally offered my ideas on which classics should come out next. They then explained they can't reproduce some of their own kits because other manufacturers own the rights. (No dig on Carl here - Semroc often surpasses Estes in quality, so good on yah!). The law is natually a screwy thing - because it's made by lawyers.

Estes also had to drop the SR-71 because Lockheed-Martin demanded royalties on the kit sales. Royalties that actually OUTSTRIPPED kit sales - so the kit was dropped....

The crux of the matter here is this: The "schwag" on the website uses Estes logos. Estes owns the rights to those logos. They don't sell mugs and mousepads, so they aren't going to pursue legal action (right, Sandman?). But they probably COULD, whether we all like it or not. I think Mike pointed this out because it's a hot topic to him - not to nanny or belittle anybody. If you don't like an open discussion of a legal issue, ask yourself this: why does it bother you? It doesn't diminish the fantastic website - it's just a sad reminder of the litigious world in which we all live!