LUNAR’clips 2004                        Volume 11, Number 4

Copyright © 2004 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

The Range Head

WHY SO LATE?

Sorry that this issue of the 'Clips is so late. I asked Geoff to hold it up until after I got back from NARAM so that I could tell you all about it. Now that I've been back for two weeks, I've been so buried catching up with things that I haven't had time to do the write-up I wanted. I did an abbreviated version below, and I'll answer any specific questions at the September meeting and, if anyone's still interested, in the next issue.

SEPTEMBER

September is shaping up to be an interesting month. The meeting will be on Wednesday, September 15 at the Carnegie Building as usual. I'll be talking about NARAM, as I said, Bob Parks will be giving us a presentation on the NASA Martian glider project he's been working on at Aurora Flight Sciences in Virginia. While the prototype is a glider (carried up to 110,000 feet by balloon for testing) the actual spacecraft will have a small liquid fueled rocket motor, Bob says it's the equivalent of a Q60 or so (one hour burn time, but pulsed), so that it can fly over the surface of Mars for a couple of hours gathering data. You don't want to miss this one!

Our next launch, on September 18, is our annual silent auction. Anyone who wants to donate something, please arrange to get it to me sometime over the next couple of weeks. PLEASE DON'T WAIT until the end of the auction and say "Oh, I had something to donate." This has happened to me every year for the past three, and the donation then has to live in my storage shed (which has precious little room as it is) for a whole year. We're a little light on items this year, but that's OK. We don't depend on this to make money, we just use it as a way of equitably distributing all of the items that are donated to the club over the year. Those of you who were at the Hornet event already know the really cool one big item.

REST OF THE YEAR

LUNAR had an incredibly busy summer with special launches and participating in the USS Hornet's "Splashdown '04." Hopefully someone will be able to do a write-up on that one since it was quite an event. The year is finally starting to wind down some. The only events (outside meetings and launches) for the rest of the year are the EBRC Airshow demo on Sunday, October 24, and the "Girls Go Tech" event on November 20th in Oakland. Those of you who have participated in the airshow previously will notice that it's about a month later this year. They just got started late. The GGT program is part of the Girl Scouts of San Francisco Bay Area effort to encourage girls to explore math, science and technology. LUNAR is one of the rare NAR sections with a large percentage of girls and women in the active membership. Naturally, I would like as many as possible to participate in this to show that it's not just "a guy thing." I'll have more details on both of these as we get closer.

NARAM NOTES

The NAR's big Annual Meet was held the first week of August in Manassas, Virginia with the flying field about 15 miles away at Great Meadow (the same field where the TARC flyoffs are held). LUNAR, as usual, represented the entire west coast, except for NAR board member George Rachor from Oregon, and two members from SCRA in southern California. Besides myself, Bob Parks and his son, William, (both new LUNAR members) were there representing the home team. Since George and I don't compete, that left only the Parks' and the two SCRA members as the only competitors west of the Rockies! You can look up the competition results on the national website (www.nar.org), but for here I'll just talk about some of the issues of more general interest.

LAC Newsletter award - One of the events that we do compete in is the one between club newsletters. The prize is a perpetual trophy sponsored by North American Rockwell. It is given to the club with the best newsletter based on a number of criteria such as frequency of publication, how well you actually stick to your publishing schedule, diversity of authors and subjects, etc. Tom Beach, the editor of Sport Rocketry magazine, presents the award at the banquet each year. There's only one trophy, but this year he read the names of the top five newsletters in alphabetical order. To announce the winner, Tom got a little catty with the top two positions. He held up a copy of the 'Clips and the NARHAMS newsletter, ZOG 43. He gave little summaries of both, saying why they had come out on top. Finally, he slowly lowered his 'Clips hand and raised the ZOG-43 hand. Dang! Missed it again!

Still, second place out of the entire country is nothing to sneeze at. Congratulations to Geoff Canham for putting out the best newsletter west of the Mississippi, officially! Of course, those of you who have been around a year or so might notice that this is exactly the same finish order as last year. In fact, the 'Clips has finished in second or third spot for the past four years.

Last year I asked Tom Beach what was keeping us from being #1, and without hesitation he said, "Plans." We don't publish enough formal plans or designs in the 'Clips. After the banquet this year I went up to him again and started, "I know what you told me last year…" to which he finished, "and you didn't do it, did you!" "Well, we tried," I protested. "But not quite enough," was his final comment.

OK, folks. We are so close to winning a national award in the only category where we are really superior. If you've come up with a neat rocket, or a new way to do an old thing, write it up and send it to Geoff. If you have any sort of formal plans for it, so much the better. Each launch I see a lot of really cool scratch-builts out there on the field, so I know you're creative. I'd like to have at least one plan or building design in each issue, especially from our junior members. Remember that the Rockwell judges read these newsletters cover-to-cover, every word. As they read this, they know that I know what's keeping us from the top spot. I hope you guys can come through for me!

Section of the Year - The only other area where we compete as a club, although not as strongly as in newsletter, is in Section of the Year. This is a competition where clubs are judged on how well they are performing in providing service to their members and the community. The categories considered by the judges include frequency of launches and meetings, membership growth, frequency of newsletters, websites, list servers, members attending national events, hosting national events, and Outreach events. Of the 18 sections sending in entries this year, here's how they finished:

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