LUNAR’clips 2001                      Volume 8, Number 4

Copyright © 2001 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

The Range Head, December 2001

Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002

2002 Schedule

I have the confirmed schedule from LARPD for our meeting and launch reservations for next year. For those of you who were at the meeting this month, note that January got bumped a week after I gave out the dates then. Hopefully, at some point in the year we will be moving to our new field, but the meetings will still be at Carnegie. The only schedule change I plan after the move is to change the Sunday launch dates, of which there are a few (especially through the summer) back to Saturday, if possible. I've noted the Sunday launches with an "*" on the dates below. At least we didn't wind up with any first or last weekend of the month dates like this year.

The competition dates are still tentative. We'll see if we can pull off that many.

A Word About the RSO and SCO

The RSO is the person in charge of the field. Originally, we had the RSO doing the model safety checks because with a relatively small number of fliers (say, less than 100 per launch) that's where the safety focus is. As we grew, though, the safety checks became quite consuming, so the RSO wasn't able to watch other aspects of the range operation. We also now have two people doing the safety checks (High Power and Low Power) and we can't have two people in charge. At NARAM last August I picked up on a new category of operation, the SCO or Safety Check Officer. At the September meeting I proposed, and the assembled members approved, that we add this title for the two people doing the safety checks (the LP-SCO and HP-SCO) which now frees up the RSO to really keep an eye on the field.

The RSO is the one that does the judgment call on questionable models or motors, decides when to "call" a launch due to wind or rain, and generally be on the lookout for any unsafe operational conditions. Since this is an official, decision making position, the RSO should be an officer of the club, and preferably HP certified.

New Venue for Meetings

I got a call from LARPD asking if we would mind changing our meeting site. It seems that the people who use it on Wednesday afternoons (the local Weight Watchers) want to extend their hours into the evening. They offered us an alternative site which, while not as historic as the Carnegie Building, is actually a little larger for the same price. It's only a few blocks away from our present site. See the Web site for the new driving instructions. Return to Index

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