NARAM Notes

Prior to traveling to Colorado last July, I'd been to five NARAM's. Two of them (Las Vegas '92 and Tucson '97) I'd driven to and three of them (Houston '94, Muncie '98 and Pittsburgh '99) I'd flown to. I thought I'd even it up and drive this year. For good measure, I thought I'd bring the family with me and try to make a vacation out of it. I'll spare you most of the travelog and just say that we took three days to get there via the southern route through Las Vegas and into Utah (stopping for a day to visit Zion National Park). On the last day we traveled through the desert heart of Utah then 2/3 of the way across Colorado (that's 14 hours driving!) to Canon City where the event was held.

Almost everyone who attends the annual meet is aware of the "NARAM Experience" which seems to permeate the event. This is a strong communal feeling that comes from attending an event big enough to take over an entire hotel. For a whole week everyone you run into is a fellow rocket crazy. If you're serious about the hobby (and you wouldn't be there if you weren't) it's great to find so many sympathetic souls. The best part, most attendees will tell you, are the late night hallway conversations, bench racing and general bull sessions that go on around the scheduled contest flying and meetings.

This year, though, the NARAM Experience was a bit muted. Even though they picked the largest hotel in Canon City (the Canon Inn) for the Headquarters, the event was very well attended with over 200 people so rooms at the event hotel were sold out by last Spring. With nearly half of the people scattered in other hotels (we were in the Holiday Inn about a mile down the street), all of the chance meetings were greatly reduced. Also, in my case, traveling with a family which is not into the hobby meant that I had to negotiate time to go over to the hotel and gab (meeting attendance was automatic). This started to feel a little like work.

There was no Section Advisors' meeting this year, which surprised me a bit, soI had to bring up our problem with the California State Attorney General at the general Association Meeting. For those of you who haven't heard, the California AG has decided that not enough attention has been paid to the "hazards" of the hobby lately and required that anyone launching a model rocket in the state where spectators are present (in this case "spectator" means anyone who just happens to wander by and watch you) had to get a pyrotechnic exhibitors permit. These are $1,500 if you want it to cover the whole state. Originally this mandate covered all rocket activities (all the way down to 1/4A) but he later revised it to only High Power flying ("H" and above). Tripoli president, Bruce Kelly, just rolled over and paid the extortion in order to not interrupt that organization's activities, but that left us in an awkward position. Apparently, LUNAR is the only club in California that flies High Power which is not also a Tripoli club. Since I was not eager to ship $1,500 of the club treasury off to Sacramento, I brought it up at the meeting to see what the NAR could do at the national level.

With the help of BayNAR president Carl Reisinger, I briefed Bunny (NAR president Mark Bundick) on the situation. His response (paraphrased) was an eye-rolling "not another know-nothing bureaucrat to deal with!" Rather than just caving in and paying, he and Carl are going to work together and send a polite but firmly worded letter to the state AG asking on what authority he is imposing this requirement. No one can figure out why he's doing it in the first place, other than he just became aware of the hobby and it "seems dangerous" to him. In any case, I'm getting an update from Carl and in the mean time, we will continue launching as always.

About the only other item discussed at the meeting that would affect our members in general is the status of the BATF lawsuit. In a way, this is connected to the previous item, only at a national level. For the past two years, the NAR and Tripoli acting together have been suing the BATF for relief from the numerous and seemingly arbitrary regulations they have been imposing on the hobby. It's pretty much the same tact that they are questioning under what authority the BATF is imposing these regulations since the materials used in hobby rocket motors are not classified as "explosives" which the BATF can regulate. At the meeting, Bunny hoped that an out-of-court settlement might be possible, but the latest update posted on the NAR website (www.nar.org) says that the negotiations have failed and they are now taking the BATF to court. For a rundown on the other items discussed at the meeting, check out the NAR website.

Now for two final items which are much more interesting. Despite the recent increase in contests (thanks again to Carl and BayNAR) our club doesn't participate in competition in any meaningful way. But there are two areas where we do compete: the Rockwell trophy for the best club newsletter and for the "Section of the Year." Last year LUNAR did really well with the newsletter. Out of the dozen or more newsletters in competition, we came in Second Honorable Mention behind the First Honorable Mention (COSROC's "COSROCketeer") and the winner, the NIRA section's "Leading Edge" (note that there is only the perpetual trophy for the winner to keep for a year, and no second and third place awards, just an honorable mention). This year we did just as well, coming in Second Honorable Mention again while the top two newsletters swapped places with COSROC coming out on top. Congratulations again to Tom Hail and all of you who contributed over the year.

However, I'd still like to see us take top spot some day. For the past year I've been asking people to contribute articles since I know that the rules favor original material as one of the most important criteria. After the awards were announced I went over and talked to Tom Beach (Sport Rocketry editor and chief judge of the competition) to ask why we were still in third place and what we could do to improve. He said that along with maintaining a regular publishing schedule and having a large percentage (preferably all) original material, the variety of articles is most highly weighted. He said that the 'Clips is improving steadily and definitely "closing in" on the top two. I asked him specifically what the others had that we didn't and he said "plans." They publish construction plans for original sport rocket designs which is something we have very little of. He also said that our articles by younger members was a big plus.

OK, so we now have our marching orders for the year. Keep sending those articles to Tom (uh, our Tom, Hail), especially if you are one of our "Youth" or "Junior" members. I don't want a lot of articles from each of you, in fact, that would be detrimental. I want each you who have ever thought of seeing your words in print to write up your favorite experience in the hobby. Don't worry if it's not Shakespeare. We can fix your spelling and grammar. And, by all means, if you have a favorite design you've invented, send it in!

Finally, regarding the Section of the Year, it's a little less hopeful. This contest judges a Section based on their all-around performance, not just their prowess in competition. In fact, the award supposedly stresses community outreach the most, and that's what LUNAR does best. Last year we placed exactly mid-pack (6th out of 12) and this year we did the same, except there were a lot more clubs participating. Unfortunately, the event coordinator wasn't there so he had a proxy read off the winners. As he left the podium, I asked if I could see the sheet with the standings. He was in a hurry, so I only got a quick glance at them, but I was distressed to see that we were now around 10th out of 20 or so (I didn't have time to do an exact count, but we were exactly in the middle again). Since just about all we do is community outreach, I was really perplexed. The only clue I took away from my quick scan of the list was that most of the clubs near the top had hosted some sort of national event during the year such as NARAM, NARCON or the National Sport Launch. Hosting a national event counts very heavily in this competition since it involves a huge amount of work on the part of the section and requires a very high level of cooperation and coordination among a large number of members.

This sort of seals our fate. It's not that I don't think LUNAR could host a national event. Given the degree of volunteerism I see at every launch, I know that we could! It's just that the demographics of the nation are against us. Nearly all of the "serious" rocketeers who are willing to travel to national events live east of the Mississippi, or, at least, east of the Great Plains. NARAM's and other big events held in California over the years are always poorly attended so the NAR is reluctant to hold them out here.

On the other hand, LUNAR had seven members (plus several non-member spouses and siblings) at this NARAM, which is something of a record for a California club. If we can keep up this level of interest, maybe there's hope yet!