Meeting of the Bored

by Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

Rather than grind through the minutes of the meeting in a parliamentary fashion, I'm going to break the nine topics discussed into nine separate sections of this article, each with a separate title. Since not everything will be of interest to everyone, you can scan down the section titles and just read the parts you want.

Part I - Speeding up launches

There were several creative solutions presented, but what we're going to do involves the most practical of them.

First, will be a change to our pad assignment procedure. Rather than having the RSO check your rocket and at the same time assign you a pad, the two will be separated. When your rocket it checked, you will get your flight card back marked as such. When a rack of pads opens up, they will be assigned "real time" working around the misfires. This was actually introduced on a trial basis at the August launch. (See the article on new launch procedures by Lynn Kissel.)

If that doesn't clear things up enough, though, the board will authorize Warren Massey to built six more pads. These will be used to accommodate the increasing number of "H" motor flights we are getting. These will be functionally equivalent to our existing pads in that they will be altitude-azimuth adjusting type with the same "quick change" launch rod socket. But rather than building the alt-az mechanism himself, Warren will be using a commercial, heavy duty ball vice base. These new pads will be placed out another 100 feet beyond the existing pads (the same distance that "Pad 13" is placed now).

This is a good place to remind everyone that we cannot support "H" motor flights unless a California Class III Pyrotechician is on site. Currently the only one in the club that makes it to launches is Mark Weiss, and he usually can't stay the whole time. Several people have approached me saying they want to get the license and help out, but so far none have completed the process.

While we haven't settled on a nomenclature for the new pads yet (let's just call them "A" through "F" for the moment) the firing sequence will be Pads 1 through 6, then A through F to pick up any HPR, then 7 through 12, then A through F again and so on.

A minor change to our checking procedures was suggested by Larry Shenosky, who drove all the way down from Marin County just to audit the meeting (thanks, Larry!). He suggested that we have two RSO's on duty to reduce the bottleneck. While the problem in the past has been lack of pads rather than safety checks (on busy days we can easily fill up both sets of clipboards while waiting for pads to open up), we may implement Larry's suggestion for another reason once we get the six new pads.

Remember that the new pads are going to be focussed on HPR -- "G" and "H" motors. The RSO's will divide their duties between model and HPR. The former will do essentially what the RSO does now, a few simple checks on a large number of small rockets. The High Power RSO will perform much more extensive checks on the relatively small number of large rockets that we get. These new, and long overdue, high-power procedures are being compiled by Dave Redell for review by the board. In addition to making sure that the fins are on tight and checking for a parachute, the rocket will be weighed and the weight checked against a manufacturer's table of max lift-off weights for the installed motor. The Center of Gravity will be checked and, if it's anything other than a commercial kit, the owner may be asked to provide calculations documenting where the Center of Pressure is. These (and other) checks will certainly be applied to all "G" and "H" motor rockets, and possibly "F" as well. While those seasoned rocketeers among us don't even think twice about an "F" motor, we've had some fairly serious prangs with them, including our one and (hopefully) only incident involving property damage.

Part II - Setting up a permanent enclosure

It seems that LARPD has permanent storage shed right across the road in the horse corral area. Currently the shed contains a gazebo that LARPD bought for one of other parks in town. Through some slick negotiation, Mark Weiss has gotten them to agree that if we can get some volunteers to help set up the gazebo, then we can use the shed. The sticking point, as always, is money. This is a relatively low priority project and LARPD has not had the budget to hire the civil engineer to do the site preparation plan for the gazebo, nor money to pour the concrete pad for it to sit on. While none of this is our concern, it does prevent us from using the shed in Robertson Park. Mark is continuing to prod them, however, and once the project is given the go-ahead, you're going to be getting the clarion call to come out and join a one-day work party to set up the gazebo.

Once we get the new shed, we'll have a new, but smaller, problem. You see, Warren not only transports the equipment in his truck, but actually STORES it there. This means that he loads it up at the end of one launch and doesn't unload it until the next launch (unless, of course, he actually wants to USE his truck for something in between launches!). If we stored our equipment "bare" in the shed, we'd have to load it up just to haul across the street then unload it. Putting it away would be the same two-step process which takes both time and increases the wear-and-tear on the equipment. The solution to this one is something else we've been talking about for a long time: an equipment trailer.

We're not talking anything fancy here, just a simple two-wheel, short-sided utility trailer that could be used as a surrogate for Warren's pickup that we could roll into the shed between launches. Of course, if you wanted to get fancy, you could build the launch console into it to save that bit of setup. Larry told us of just that sort of project that his former club in Florida built; so we have some experience in-house. Mark is going to talk to member Joe Mingoia about inexpensive ways of getting such a set of wheels.

Part III - September contest

Well, contests need one thing to happen; a Contest Director (CD). It's not a hard job, but one that needs a bit of involvement and dedication. Rob Powers did it earlier this year, Kurt Peters and I handled the two last year. If I weren't busy being Prez, I'd do it again myself. Despite my request last June for a new CD among all of our e-mail capable members, no one stepped forward.

In early August when the board met, there was still time to pull together another contest for this year if a CD could be found right away. I suggested pleading for one in this article, but ultimately we decided it wasn't practical with everything else that goes on at the end of the year. The unanimous decision of the board was to cancel the contest for this year and hope that someone steps forward early next year to handle one, or preferably both, contests next year. You'll be reminded again later!

Part IV - Longer launch days

Part of this is due, of course, to not having enough volunteers to man the jobs as it is (more on this in Part V), but Larry thinks that it might be EASIER to get volunteers if they didn't have to try and squeeze so much into the morning.

After some discussion, we thought we'd give his ideas a try. For the September and October launches only, we will be extending the launch day to 2 PM. We'll then evaluate how things went and decide if we want to make the change permanent. Even if it's a wonderful success, we can't make the change permanent until we get the equipment storage issue resolved (see Part II) since we can't take an even larger bite out of Warren's weekend!

Part V - Hosting NARAM

Despite this, as far back as 1993, Mark Weiss thought it would be a great idea to have LUNAR host one of these week long extravaganzas. The subject came up again recently because, as of the end of August, the NAR doesn't yet have a host club for 1997. I talked some with Mark Bundick and Trip Barber, the president and vice president of NAR, respectively, to find out just what was involved. I also put out some feelers to Dan Davis (president of BAYNAR) and William Walby (treasurer of Aero-PAC) to see what their feelings were about possibly hosting a joint event to help spread the load. Everyone was quite open about the idea but we are lacking two things: experience in holding a national event and a strong organizer willing to take this on.

At the board meeting we reviewed the materials sent by the NAR and discussed the situation. Once again, Larry Shenosky provided some valuable input, having helped host NARAM's in the past in Florida (this subject was, in fact, the reason he drove all of the way down to attend).

We came to several conclusions: The main problem is the field. While our Robertson Park flying field may be great for sport flying, it has many problems in hosting serious contests. There's no room to put an adequately long tracking baseline (it would have to be roughly twice as long as we can currently fit in the field across the street) and even if we negotiated with the land owners next to the field to let us set up trackers on their property, you can't see the launch pads from the tracking stations (this is a requirement in the official "Pink Book" rules) due to the sunken berm around the park. Also, there has been a steady encroachment of high-buck homes around our field. While these well-heeled folks will put up with four hours of flying once a month, I don't think they would appreciate six or eight hours a day for a whole week; not to mention the other noise and traffic. While the search for a new field is a good idea in any case, we felt that there just wasn't time to pull this off before next summer.

Finally, we all felt that with the volunteerism level of this club at it's constant low level, even if we could find an enthusiastic, dedicated individual to pull this thing together. Unlikely (see Part III), where would s/he get the help to run it? We have trouble staffing our monthly launches for lousy one hour shifts (more on this in the next section). How could we possibly find the dozens of daily people needed to run NARAM?

Part VI - Volunteers

Nothing was resolved, but Warren Massey's volunteerism article elsewhere in this issue points out the critical level this problem has attained. Lynn Kissel's volunteer-coordinator article contains proposals for dealing with this issue in a constructive manner.

With that said, though, I want to thank those people (and they know who they are) who have stepped forth, eagerly, each time we've asked for help on the PA. The problem is, we've had to ask...

Part VII - Aerotech results

Part VIII - Evening launches

With the planning sessions coming up for next year's launches, what do you people think of having one or more of our launches next year in the evening? It's better in summer, of course, but we could do it any time it's not raining or too windy.

Part IX - Art contest

We would hold it as a "regular" meeting (I put that in quotes because we only call meetings on special event basis now) but without the formal agenda. Folks could wander around, viewing the entries and visiting while the judges, probably drafted from the board, made their selections. We could probably get some hobby shops to spring for some low key prizes like a kit or box of motors.

Then again, Royce Longacre would probably win by just plopping one of is old models down on the table and walking away!

Copyright © 1996 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

Information date: Oct. 1, 1996 lk