State of the (Rocket) Union

Everyone:

Well another year has flown by and we are part way through our 2006-2007 flying season. The 2005-2006 season was a great one, membership is trending up, slowly. Attendance is up. This hobby, through all the regulatory issues, is still hanging in there. We have a great group of folks who love to fly. Of course, all the buzz last year was Doug Knight's mentored TARC team winning the 'Nationals', that was truly the feel good story of the year. The guys gave their account of the contest last fall, it was truly a lesson in doing your homework, working hard, and having just a little "luck" along the way and you can succeed in what ever you put your mind to. I suspect we will have more folks attempting to qualify this year, will just have to wait and see.

I want to thank Steve Bumgarner, Roy Potter, John Hood for being the ROCC officers for the year, again. You all do great work and are very appreciative. Again, the call to change leadership has not yielded any new candidates, unless I missed someone. However, a lot of support has been offered, to the point I am going to take people up on that. Colon, I be calling you.

We did not have an official meeting for nominations last launch cause everyone wanted to fly, however, we had some discussions on moving some folks around. However, if you all would like to take 10 minutes at the start of the day, say around Noon Saturday Jan 20th to do the official "call to meeting" we will do so. Our by-laws do state we have an official nominating/elections for club offices each year.

For the rest of you volunteers, here is my shout out to you guys and gals. You all make it easy at launches for setup and tear down, equipment clean up, etc. These launches can't be pulled off by just one person, it takes a village and we have a great one.

Here's the list of current officers as of 1/1/07:

ROCC President
Ralph Roberts
ROCC Treasurer and Secretary
Roy Potter
TRA #066 Prefect Office
Ralph Roberts
TRA #066 Secretary Office
John Hood
NAR Advisor - Office
Bob Bernachez

Note:
New job opportunities for Steve B. is going to prevent him from returning as "NAR ADVISOR" this year. He asked Bob Bernachez to take over that role, and Bob has agreed. Now, Steve says he is still available for technical assistance, just more in a support role.

New Launch Duty Roster going in effect for 2007

Todd Haring offered a great idea they used out in AZ. This is also utilized at big launches like ROCSTOCK, LDRS, etc. We never had the number of L2 folks to pull this off, however, we are going to try it this year. This may free up my time to not have to be at all the launches all the time. This will help my sanity and my personal life.

The way it will work will be we'll have sign up sheets at the launch for folks to volunteer to pull duty the next launch. Duties include:
Saturday, set up crew (2-3)

Saturday, tear down crew (-2-3)

Sunday, set up crew (2-3)

Sunday, tear down crew (-2-3)

NAR Certifying member L1
NAR Certifying witness L1

NAR Certifying member L2
NAR Certifying witness L2

NAR L2 Test administrator

TRA L2 Test administrator and Certifying member (Usually the prefect only)
This may be broken down into time slots, (ex "Ralph will be there from 3:00 till Sunset, Sunday only)

LCO (Has to be L2 or higher to fly the big birds) (2-3 people running 2 hour shifts, say 11-1, 1-3, 3-5, etc.)

RSO/Sign Up Table/Pad Manager (2-3 people running 2 hour shifts, say 11-1, 1-3, 3-5, etc.)
Note this person would be the traffic cop for the access to the pads, when it gets busy, folks just rush the pads. We need this person to line up folks and make sure they are ready to go to the pads, I would like to work on keeping the rockets flying faster this year, that has been the complaint in the past as we will have the pads full but no one pressing buttons. Not good.

NAR Contest volunteers

Once you have signed up, you will be committed to performing that task or contacting someone to take your spot for that launch. This will free me up from having to call/email around and make sure we will have enough folks there to pull off the launch. We all are busy and by sharing the load it will help the folks who have put in more than there fair share, to have some downtime or just to enjoy the launch.

Last Year Highlights
More success for us last year included the number of members certifying in HP both L1 and L2, we probably have the highest numbers of L1 and L2 active members since the mid 90s. Way to go guys!

We had a lot of great flights at the Farm this past year. Mark, Terry, Todd and even myself had a variety of good L2 flights last year that was able to wow the crowds, I think Mark had the record on K impulse with a lot of K550s.

Mark Canepe has also blessed us with some wonderful photos and insight form the HP world out west, he is a wealth of information and has two books to prove it. You should get his books if you have not already done so. Modern High-Power Rocketry 1 and 2 is a great reference tool all HP flyers should have. Mark is a real HPR junkey, every launch he attends he usually working LCO, RSO, taking pictures and helping out.

We gained 2 new vendors with HOBBYTOWN USA and GIANT LEAP ROCKETRY attending our launches regularly.

Tim Franks and Doc Russell perfected the Extra/Backup launch control system. This has come in handy as we have experienced some trouble with the old one. Thanks guys for keeping us flying.

Thanks to Joe Grosjean for re-doing a couple of our High Power launch heads, some of our equipment is starting to age a bit.
Will have folks work on the rest of them this year to keep us going.

Going forward

I am looking forward to a good year, the first launch is set for Jan 20th and Jan 21st, next weekend.
We should have plenty of vendors.
I am hoping we can do more NAR contest this year.
We have a potential summer site already in the works, thanks to Sandy Houston.
By the end of July the APCP court case may have resolution baring any ATF last minute changes.
Our Schedule for the farm will run through April before the Barley may be too high and dry to fly, I suspect that we may be able to fly once the Barley comes out in late June and then again in July as the Soybean crop is planted. It looks like now that we will be out of the farm for August,September, and October until the soybeans are harvested.
However, ICBM's Freedom launch will be Labor day weekend in Orangeburg and judging by the turnout there last year by ROCC members, it is becoming the September launch anyway.
Looking forward to a good year and seeing you all on the range and as Roy always says "Keep the pointy end up and the noisy end down"

Sincerely,
Ralph Roberts
ROCC President and Prefect.