Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

Hi folks.

This column is going to be a bit shorter than normal. I still have all the usual inputs of odds 'n ends, but there's been a little "incident" I've got to take care of.

Sunday, February 18 (the day after the last launch) I attended a niece's birthday party that was held at a skating rink. Anyone who wanted to could go skating, and even though I hadn't been on ice skates since I was four (and lived in Idaho) I thought it would be fun. Well, it was great fun until about five minutes before we were supposed to stop when I took a little spill and twisted my ankle. I thought it was just a bad sprain, but my doctor wanted me to get it X-rayed.

Guess what? My fibula is broken and the ankle is pushed about 2mm out of alignment! As I type this, I'm going in tomorrow (Feb 22) for surgery to put it right again. After that, I'll be pretty much out of circulation for about six weeks.

Sorry about this. Maybe we'll get lucky and the launch will be rained out (just kidding!).

MARCH MEETING

This month's meeting is on Wednesday, March 14 at the usual time (7:30) and place (the Carnegie Building). In addition to the usual club stuff, I plan to talk about my trip to NASA Dryden at the beginning of February and see if anyone is interested in a club tour of the place.

MARCH LAUNCH

It has been brought to my attention that March 16th is the 75th anniversary of the first liquid fueled rocket flight, which was made by Robert Goddard in Massachusetts. Since our launch this month is on the 17th (what's a day among rocket crazies?) I think we ought to mark the occasion somehow, much like we did for Apollo 11 a couple years back.

For those of you who might want to build a model one of his rockets for the launch (the one he flew on March 16, 1926 is notoriously unstable), check out Peter Alway's "Retro Rockets" which has an extensive Goddard section. Retro Rockets is still available through Amazon, as well as directly from Saturn Press.

This will be an informal event. Anything Goddard related (like a cherry tree... look it up) is eligible. It should be interesting to see what people bring.

WHAT'S A WAIVER?

Last January I got a note from a new member with a question that I'm sure lots of you have. Chris Murray wrote:

“As a new member I have a question. What is our FAA waiver, anyway? I see things like "waiver to 3500 feet AGL" or "5000 feet MSL" on other clubs' launch announcements on the web.”

As you can probably imagine, Chris, the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) has rules that prevent any activity that would interfere with the safe operation of aircraft. One such activity is throwing small burning devices several thousand feet into the air around airports! In order to do what we do legally, we have to petition the FAA to "waive" the rule that prohibits us from doing this in exchange for a well defined set of restrictions. One of the restrictions is how high we can fly these things. This can be defined as either "Above Ground Level" (AGL) or the altitude above Mean Sea Level (MSL). Pilots like the latter because they don't have to know the elevation of the ground that they're flying over. They just have to keep their altimeter above the MSL number. We like the former, for the same reason in reverse. We don't have to subtract the elevation of our launch field (which is 540' MSL) from the estimated altitude of a given rocket before deciding if it will "bust the waiver." Our waiver this year is for 4,500' AGL.

Other restrictions placed on us are that we fly only on the scheduled days that we state on our application (the waiver has to be renewed every year), and that we do a visual check to guarantee that there are no aircraft within our flight zone, which the FAA defines as a cylinder 3 miles in radius and 4,500 feet (our waiver altitude) high. Obviously, if there are low clouds or fog that prevents us from seeing the full extent of the flight zone, we cannot fly rockets under the waiver. If we fly between sunset and sunrise (like we do at our night launches) the rockets covered by the waiver have to meet the FAA regulation regarding collision avoidance flashers.

There are limits the other way, too. The FAA doesn't want to be bothered having to approve waivers for the millions of small model rockets flown every year, so they have determined that a safe limit for a rocket to pose no threat to a flying aircraft is 1,500 grams (3.3 pounds) and/or containing less than 125 grams of propellant at liftoff. So if you hear of us flying "unwaivered" that means that we can only fly rockets under that weight and propellant level (which is about a "G" motor, but some low end "H"s are under 125 grams).

NEWSLETTER FEVER

There is a mailing list for NAR section advisors where, much like our "lunar.announce" mailing list, they can communicate items of importance to the sections in a timely manner. It is also used for the occasional discussion. In February a topic came up that is near and dear to me. One of the section leaders wrote:

“I used to dutifully send in our newsletter [to the national LAC newsletter competition] but became discouraged when the same newsletter won something like three years in a row, or four out of five or some such nonsense. It struck me as being yet another manifestation of the clique mentality as there were other newsletters that impressed me more, and which more faithfully adhered to the published weighting factors."

To which I replied:

Interesting. I see this as a challenge. The "four out of five" you mentioned was probably "ZOG-43," the NARHAMS newsletter (whose name has never been explained to me). Even though it was seemingly welded into the top spot for a while, it hasn't even been the running the past few years which shows that the mighty do fall. When we first started sending our newsletter in to the LAC judges, we wound up in mid pack. With a deliberate, concerted effort to improve (I actually tell our members and editor I want to win that thing!) two years ago we were in second runner up position behind COSROCS (first runner up) and NIRA (the winner). Last year the top two swapped places and we were second runner up again. I went over to Tom Beach and asked what they were doing that we weren't and he told me (but I'm not going to tell you :-) so that's what we're working on this year. We may not make the top spot, but with any luck we'll make it to first runner up.

Jeeze, what will I do with that monstrosity of a trophy if we win?