LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 1
LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 1
Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry January/February 2004
Copyright © 2004 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.
Great news! The LUNAR board and other senior members held a special checkout launch at Snow Ranch outside of Stockton. It looks like we have a field, albeit a remote one, to see us through the Robertson turf rehab. Please see the article elsewhere.
I'm sorry to say that the Robertson turf field is really gong to be closed from mid-February through mid-May. The grass re-seeding that cancelled our November launch didn't take (too cold and wet), which is why they re-opened the field for us in December (not that it did any good). There will be no club launches there in March or April. They wanted to close it for all of May, but Livermore has recently taken on the "Scottish Games" which are scheduled for the weekend of May 15/16. The Turf guy wants to give the field two weeks to recover before allowing any large groups out again. I have reserved Saturday, 5/29 for the night launch. This is the first day of the Memorial Day weekend, and would be a great way to start it off.
With all of the uncertainty, our schedule has taken quite a beating. The best thing to do is check our website since Bill is pretty good at keeping it updated while aiming at this moving target. So just for planning purposes, here is our schedule for the rest of the year:
February 21 - Launch at Snow Ranch.
March 20 - Launch at Snow Ranch.
April 17 - Launch at Snow Ranch.
May 29 - Night Launch.
June 20 - (Father's Day) We were bumped to a Sunday since June is Rodeo month.
Our first planned contest of the year.
July - either 17 or 24. There is a "brewfest" slated for one of these days.
Once they find out which it is, we get the other one.
August 21 - Currently approved, but stand by to be bumped by soccer
September 18 - Second contest of the year.
October 17 - A Sunday Night Launch. Got bumped from the 16th due to a horse event.
November 20
December 18 - Final contest for the year.
The meetings should be the Wednesday before each launch at the Carnegie Building. There is also the possibility of a May launch at Snow ranch if it doesn't dry out too much.
To those of us who were around at the time, it is impossible to believe that 35 years have passed since the first moon landing. To commemorate the event, the USS Hornet museum (the Hornet was the ship that recovered both Apollo 11 and Apollo 12) is planning a "Splash Down" celebration in July. It will be a weeklong event with displays, demonstrations and even some notable guests (they're trying for Buzz Aldrin). We have been asked to participate, and while nothing has been set yet, they would like us, along with BayNAR, to set up a model rocketry booth, and maybe, if we can work out the logistics, do some sort of live demonstration. That should be fun, especially if we get to fly from the flight deck! Stay tuned for further developments.
I don't have to tell the regulars that LUNAR had a pretty miserable launch record last year, the worst in our history. Of the twelve scheduled launches, three were rained out (January, March and December), one was "soccered out" (August) and one was cancelled at the last minute by LARPD due to field damage by the previous user (November). Combine this with our self-imposed 1,500' altitude limit, which keeps the "big boys" away, and our stats for last year were pretty pathetic:
|
Summary, 2003 |
|||||||||
|
Total Flights: |
1620 |
||||||||
|
Total Motors consumed: |
1788 |
plus 4 unkn |
|||||||
|
Total Impulse expended: |
30,801 |
||||||||
|
Average Impulse: |
17.2 |
A mid range "D" |
|||||||
|
Motor Use Breakdown: |
|||||||||
|
1/4A |
1/2A |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
|
1 |
30 |
246 |
383 |
616 |
251 |
107 |
66 |
65 |
23 |
On the up side, we held about a dozen special launches for the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) that aren't reflected in those stats. Thanks for those got to Lee Teschiera for organizing them while I was on business travel, and to the dozen or so hard-core volunteers who came out to help.
For this year's TARC launches, LARPD has approved our request to use the unimproved area north of the soccer fields (the area bounded by the fields, parking lot and creek) to use as a launch area while the turf field is being renovated. The one condition is that we have a "designated retriever" to go fetch any rockets that land in any of the grass areas under renovation.
What we really need is a new, low power field in town (meaning anywhere in the greater Livermore-Pleasanton area). This club now has a long record of excellence, and I don't want to see it slip due to an on-again/off-again schedule on an unreliable field.
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