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The Range Head

by Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

CONTESTS

We held our first joint contest with BayNAR last month on the 20^th and it went quite well. The turnout was a bit light for a regional, but actually more than I was expecting considering the date. The contest was cut short after only two events due to rain, but (wouldn't you know) it was only a teaser drizzle that eventually cleared up (just about the time we finished packing up the equipment) and it didn't rain again the rest of the month!

For those of you interested in the results, contest organizer Dan Davis has posted the results on the BayNAR web site. Those of you who are web-enabled can view them at

http://members.aol.com/baynar/rockets/results.htm

and a summary of the results appears elsewhere in this issue of the newsletter.

Actually, the contest wasn't really truncated; the second half is scheduled to continue this month (January).

MEETING AND LAUNCH

Remember that our first regularly scheduled meeting of the year will be Thursday, January 15 at 7 PM in the public meeting room of the Livermore Police station. (See directions on how to get to LUNAR meetings.) After the business portion of the meeting, I'll be talking about the hobby basics in the first of Andrew Pohlman's educational programs. It will be a primer for those new to the hobby, but I'll try to hit all aspects so as to not be TOO simplistic. Be sure to bring the kids, and your own questions as well.

We'll also be voting on officers for the year at this meeting, so come in and perform your civic duty!

The meeting will be followed two days later by our first launch of the year on January 17. This will be the second of our two launches dedicated to G. Harry Stine, our hobby's founder who passed away last November. If you didn't sign the poster last month, it will be out there again and now I've got it mounted to cardboard...

NEW SCALE EVENT

One last announcement for you scale modelers out there. I've been working with NAR Scale guru Peter Alway to get a new category of Scale competition approved for NAR competition. Currently, only models of "real" rockets (e.g. Saturn, Atlas, Titan, etc.) can be entered in Scale, but some of the neatest rocket designs come from fiction. The new category is called "Future/Fiction Scale" and, as the name implies, will allow both fictional designs (from books, movies and TV) or futuristic proposals that were never built (like all of those von Braun studies for Collier's magazine in the 1950's). Part of the approval process is to hold test versions of the contest using the proposed rules. These are not for points or prizes (well, maybe we can get Ron Baskett to print up some certificates), but just to help "shake out" the rules.

I'd like to hold one of these test contests fairly soon, say in March or April, but not on the same day as one of the "official" contests with BayNAR. If you're interested in participating, contact me and I'll send you a copy of the proposed rules.

Information date: January 11, 1998 lk