Author Topic: Trying to find Peter Hunter  (Read 8260 times)

Offline Weasel Pilot

  • Member
  • Posts: 10
  • Charleston, SC
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Trying to find Peter Hunter
« on: 07/30/2017 08:31 pm »
I'm trying to track down Peter Hunter, he of the launch photo collection, anyone know him, or better yet know how I can reach him? 

Dave Mason

Offline Jim

  • Night Gator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 37440
  • Cape Canaveral Spaceport
  • Liked: 21451
  • Likes Given: 428
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #1 on: 07/31/2017 04:37 am »
He retired to New Zealand or Australia.  He got out of the rocket photo business

Offline Phillip Clark

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2616
  • Hastings, England
  • Liked: 557
  • Likes Given: 1078
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #2 on: 07/31/2017 06:45 am »
I'm trying to track down Peter Hunter, he of the launch photo collection, anyone know him, or better yet know how I can reach him? 
Dave Mason

If you send me your email via private message on here I will pass it on to Peter.   He has retired as a pilot and is in Australia.   He is still maintaining his spaceflight and database interests.
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline Weasel Pilot

  • Member
  • Posts: 10
  • Charleston, SC
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #3 on: 07/31/2017 07:23 pm »
Thanks to all, greatly appreciated

Offline WallE

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 413
  • Liked: 158
  • Likes Given: 1
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #4 on: 07/31/2017 11:30 pm »
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=16100.0

According to this thread, he amassed a huge collection of Atlas and Thor/Delta photos, although I haven't seen much of the latter online anywhere. It says that there's fewer available Titan images and Lockheed-Martin aren't as generous about sharing their archives. I suspect that that's because Titan was mostly not a civilian launch vehicle and the large majority of them were used to launch sensitive, top-secret payloads (including all Titan 3Bs and 3Ds), although declassifications of the photoreconnaissance stuff have happened since the thread was made in 09.

chromehooves.net has some Titan I stuff and most of the mission reports for Gemini are on NTRS which should tell you just about everything of importance about the Titan II GLV. Titan III/IV pics/video/mission reports are really lacking for the above-mentioned reason, but then they're probably not that interesting to begin with; there weren't as many of them flown as Atlas/Thor/Delta and the flight failures are well documented and the causes of them known.

NTRS has the mission report for SPHINX's launch vehicle, this is the only Titan III postflight report I've seen.
« Last Edit: 08/01/2017 03:44 am by WallE »

Offline Phillip Clark

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2616
  • Hastings, England
  • Liked: 557
  • Likes Given: 1078
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #5 on: 08/01/2017 07:38 am »
So people know, I have just passed Weasel Pilot's e-mail to Peter Hunter.
« Last Edit: 08/01/2017 08:48 am by Phillip Clark »
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #6 on: 08/01/2017 08:40 am »
Hi All, It's Peter Hunter here.

Phil Clark gave me a heads-up a contact was wanted with me. Yes, I was a Qantas 747 Captain, now retired.

Many of the Atlas photos did come from San Diego, from the old Convair/GD archives, which were rescued from destruction in the nick of time. Events conspired for me to visit there when on standdown time in LA (2.5 days) to scan images laboriously chosen from that enormous archive by Bob Bradley, a retired Atlas engineer. I stayed at the home of Dick Martin, a long-time Convair/GD engineer, who was the unofficial "Atlas Historian."

Photos did also come from many other sources - NASA, USAF, and various individuals with backgrounds in the USAF and contractor companies. Acknowledgements, where possible, accompany the DVDs of these, but equally sometimes the sources did not wish to be mentioned.

Along the way I had opportunities to also scan many images from the Thor/Delta family, and the Titan family.

Whilst I did manage, with major inputs from retirees, to produce accompanying documentation in PDF form of the Atlas and Thor/Delta programs, my Titan coverage is limited to images.

I have also built a comprehensive launch database of my own design. But basically I have just copied data freely available elsewhere - particularly that of Jonathan McDowell, to whom we all own an enormous debt for his work. I've added reports from that database to the DVDs on which I've written the images. Dick Martin did provide valuable detailed input on the Atlas family. Of course over the years payload info in particular has been significantly enhanced with the result that the photo captions, and database entries I originally produced are in many cases superseded by fuller and more accurate data (see Jonathan), but the photos are still relevant.

Some numbers: Atlas - 645 images, Thor-Delta family 803 images, Titan 392 images. Plus in the case of Atlas and Thor, a whole bunch of PDFs with documentation.

At the end of each exercise I did mail out multiple copies of the DVDs to everyone who had contributed, and I have over the years seen the odd reference to them, and some which have definitely come from the collection, but unattributed and with captioning removed! I can be certain of this because all were substantially Photoshopped from the originals in unique ways - much of the damage done by the years was repairable with a fair bit of work in hotel rooms around the world on standdown time!!

I can produce and mail DVDs of these if required. BUT! Air mail from Oz to the US might ruin my retirement funds, so maybe you guys can coordinate amongst yourselves that if I send a copy of these to someone, that person can reproduce for others... I did promise all donors that there was no commercial aim in gathering this stuff - the interest was purely in preservation, and the widest possible circulation of it as a tribute to the K's of people who accomplished so much in this field.

My direct email is: [email protected]

Pleased to hear from anyone with an interest in this..

Peter.

Offline gwiz

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 602
  • Cornwall
  • Liked: 143
  • Likes Given: 29
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #7 on: 08/01/2017 09:16 am »
Hi Peter,

As a grateful recipient of your DVDs, I recognise them as a valuable resource that deserves to be better known.  I wonder if you could put the contents on line, perhaps in a Dropbox account where other members of this forum could access them?

Geoff

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #8 on: 08/01/2017 09:54 am »
Geoff,

Yes, I agree that an on-line repository would be good value.

My problem with it twofold: (1) Required capacity of a Dropbox folder or similar and (2) My upload speed.

Image files as sent out on the DVDs are a fraction of the size of the images I finished Photoshopping as 600dpi 8"x10" .TIF files:

Atlas: 21.56Gb, Thor/Delta 22.7Gb, Titan: 5.9Gb.

I usually cut these right down to 300dpi 8"x10" JPG files with compression as low as 10% to get them to fit, originally on 2xCDs, but then on a DVD.

DVD sizes finished up as :

Atlas: 3.82Gb, TD: 3.93Gb, and Titan, which was only of images and no other documentation, 2xDVDs at 4.05Gb and 1.9Gb.

I did note in my documentation that if anyone required the max in terms of quality, I could forward the 600dpi TIF files of selected images - but you can see from the above sizes this would be limited in quantity for practical reasons.

I shall explore the possibility of copying all material onto a mailable high capacity USB stick, if there's anyone out there who could host the collection for all to download their selections at whatever quality they want... I'll post on this tomorrow.

Peter.


Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #9 on: 08/01/2017 10:48 pm »
Ok,

I now have a very small 128Gb USB sticklet, formatted as exFAT.

On it are the exact, complete, file contents as per the three DVDs I've previously circulated on Atlas, Thor/Delta, and Titan.

As well, are the full-size 600dpi, 8"x10", TIF image files of all three families.Total size = 60Gb.

If anyone on this forum can host them online, in whatever form will work to make them generally available, I'll mail it to them. I leave it to those interested to maybe discuss here or by private inter-person messaging, to come to some agreement.

Usage once on-line: I'd suggest users might download the DVD content if they don't already have that, and then select any high-res images of launches they're particularly interested in.

Regards, and I await any advice(s) on this!

Peter.


Offline WallE

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 413
  • Liked: 158
  • Likes Given: 1
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #10 on: 08/02/2017 02:14 am »
The lack of Titan material is...has anyone ever seen video of a Titan 3B in flight? Most of what's available pertains to Titan I/II.

Peter says he has 392 Titan images. I wonder what vehicles/launches they are?

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #11 on: 08/02/2017 02:30 am »
Re Titan,

I did discontinue work on this as per comments by Art leBrun (RIP), but the later did finish it off with muchhelp from others.

I will try to document the launches covered in my next post.

Peter.

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #12 on: 08/02/2017 02:55 am »
For those potentially interested in the Titan collection, I attach a DIR listing of the 100%JPG versions.

Of course these are also available in the 8x10 TIF format with much bigger file sizes, as per my proposal to send a USB stick to someone who can host all online.

Peter.

Offline WallE

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 413
  • Liked: 158
  • Likes Given: 1
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #13 on: 08/02/2017 04:12 am »
For those potentially interested in the Titan collection, I attach a DIR listing of the 100%JPG versions.

I can see there's large gaps in the Titan 3B and 3D photos (as Ed Kyle has pointed out, not many images of them are out there). BTW, Wikipedia does have a (somewhat blurry) photo of what appears to be an SDS/Quasar launch--the weather appears to be overcast and foggy, so we know it's not the Quasar 1 vehicle shown on space.skyrocket.de which is launching into a clear sky.

Most Titan 3B images are of the 23B/24B variant used for KH-8 rather than the 33B/34B with the full width fairing used for Jumpseat/SDS.
« Last Edit: 08/02/2017 09:57 am by WallE »

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #14 on: 08/02/2017 07:00 am »
True there are gaps, but I think you'll find there's at least one good photo of each sub-model in the T3 series, and several of many of them...

Offline gwiz

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 602
  • Cornwall
  • Liked: 143
  • Likes Given: 29
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #15 on: 08/02/2017 08:51 am »
If NSF could host those Titan pictures it would give me for one a good incentive to upgrade to L2.

Online Chris Bergin

Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #16 on: 08/02/2017 11:49 pm »
We'd be willing to host large blocks in L2, but that's L2 - and I think the idea of this database is to be public for all, I'm guessing.

The problem for a site like this, on dedicated servers, is bandwidth, not the database size. The services that offer repository services have bunches of shared servers, so they mainly ask you how much you want to upload/host.

I think there must be a way to host the DVDs in a premium dropbox type service that wouldn't be much money and easily raised by the interested folk here. A quick scan and it looks like about 10-15 bucks a month to upload, host and allow access - and that's all public. I'm sure someone will know better from experience. I mean someone could even set up a basic directory site, get it hosted dirt cheap, upload the contents, allow Peter to keep ownership, and there you go.

From what I can gather, it would require someone to receive Peter's DVDs and then upload them to the repository.
Support NSF via L2 -- Help improve NSF -- Site Rules/Feedback/Updates
**Not a L2 member? Whitelist this forum in your adblocker to support the site and ensure full functionality.**

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #17 on: 08/03/2017 12:17 am »
OK Folks,

It seems I have a free DropBox allowance of some 8Gb or so. Part of this I use for personal backups.

I have created a Folder there holding all the Titan 100% JPG images. The upload time for this (about 1Gb) was a couple of hours. So given some patience, it is practical for me to upload the Atlas and Thor-Delta family Archives.

It looks as though (Free) I could put up either all the Atlas DVD contents, or all the Thor-Delta family DVD contents, but not both.

I suggest you have a look at and maybe download the Titan images. If this works OK, I would upload either Atlas or Thor-delta, then swap around after a couple of months. Any preference as to which goes first?

I would like to emphasize here the Titan photo collection is very much a combined effort: Art LeBrun (deceased), John Hilliard, Michael Nagel, and Joel Powell all contributed significantly. If you would be so kind, please give any Titan credits as : "via LeBrun,Hilliard,Hunter,Nagel,Powell."

Here's the Titan Link. Let me know re Atlas / TD priority:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ydq2w2o6yas3nqs/AAA4Zl5v1hfOlG3_lwgr1RWIa?dl=0

All feedback/suggestions appreciated!

Best Regards,

Peter.


Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #18 on: 08/03/2017 12:18 am »
Also, should I start a new Thread on this to perhaps catch the eye of others interested in these images?

Peter.

Offline RedTail48

  • Member
  • Posts: 25
  • Australia
  • Liked: 30
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Trying to find Peter Hunter
« Reply #19 on: 08/03/2017 12:21 am »
Just investigated:

The cost for a 1Tb allowance for me on DropBox would be a bit over Oz$100.

I'll do that for a year, if the Titan thing works, to enable locating those plus contents of the other 2 DVDs.

Then if anyone wants a specific very high res image - 8x10 600dpi TIF, I could upload just that as well on request.

Peter.

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
1