Due to peoples' unavailability, we have decided to push the next Buder Park model rocket launch back to Saturday, September 7. We'll send out another announcement with the event details closer to the launch. So no club launch on Sunday August 25. If you have any questions, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com.
At our last club meeting on July 23rd, the SLRA annual election was held. The results were as follows:
Congratulations, and thank you to the officers for your service to the club!
Our next model rocket launch is scheduled for this coming Saturday, July 27th at Buder Park. The current Weather Underground forecast predicts sunny skies, 5-7 mile per hour winds and a temperature of 71 at 8:00am rising into the mid 80s by noon. Finally, we have some good luck with the weather! I checked the park today and found that there is still quite a bit of standing water in the southeast corner of the park, south of our launch site, but the rest of the field is dry, the grass is still in pretty good shape, and the road is open all the way around the park.
As always, please check the website for last-minute updates before heading to the field, or check your email if you are subscribed to the email list.
We'll start setup at 8:00 am and should have the range open by 8:30 if not earlier. The range will stay open for as long as people are flying, but we're typically done by 12:00 or 1:00 pm.
If you have any questions, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com.
---The fine print---
Launch pads are usually set up in the southeast corner of the park, but this may change based on wind direction and other activities nearby.
Anyone who is a current, paid member of the National Association of Rocketry or Tripoli Rocketry Association is welcome to participate. Due to insurance regulations, those who are not a member of one of the two national organizations will need to have a NAR or Tripoli member inspect and fly their rockets for them. Non-members will also be asked to sign a liability release. If you wish to fly your own rockets, please be prepared to show your NAR or Tripoli membership card, or a receipt of payment if you are a new member who has not yet received a card.
Please note that these launches may be cancelled for a number of reasons, notably: weather conditions (rain, high wind), park conditions (mud, flooding), or scheduling conflicts (another group’s use of the park makes it impossible to safely launch, or not enough SLRA members are available to run the launch). Please check the “current launch status” on the front page of our website, http://dmortproductions.com/stlrocketry, before making your way to the park.
Buder Park launches are conducted under the NAR safety code as “Class 1” rocket launches. Class 1 launches carry the following restrictions:
Decisions of the LCO (launch control officer) and RSO (range safety officer) are final with respect to these restrictions and safety in general. Our goal is safety for everyone involved.
The total size of Buder Park is approximately 2100 x 1200 feet, which according to the Model Rocket Safety Code is large enough to fly a G motor rocket. However, please keep in mind that we are usually not the only users of the park – we share it with radio control aircraft flyers, archers, sports teams, joggers, and many others. Also, the perimeter of the park is lined with very tall trees, and just beyond the north treeline you will find the Meramec River. Have some idea of how high your rocket is expected to go before you launch, keep the wind conditions in mind, and use common sense. Experienced SLRA members will be happy to advise you to make sure your rocket is safe and likely to be recoverable.
Finally, please remember to take adequate precautions in hot weather – use sunscreen and bring water or sports drinks to stay hydrated. One nice thing about Buder Park is that there is plenty of shade around the edges of the field, so please take shelter from the sun when you need to.
SLRA's annual director / officer election will be held at tonight's meeting (see previous announcement). I re-read the election announcement I sent on Sunday and spotted an error - it should say that Jack Oney is not running for re-election as vice president. Hopefully that was clear from the context. My note about not running for secretary again was not a typo, though. 🙂
I have so far not received any requests for additional people asking to have their names included on the ballot, so we have two offices (vice president and secretary) with no candidates. If you are interested in finding a way to help keep the club running, this is your opportunity!
If you have any questions, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com.
Dan Crank
Secretary, St. Louis Rocketry Association
I'm combining a few announcements into one, so this post will be a bit longer than usual. Please read all the way to the end, as there is important information about our upcoming election.
But first off - SLRA has our regular model rocket launch scheduled for this Saturday, July 27th, at Buder Park. We've seen some recent photos from Buder that indicate that there is still some standing water on the field from the recent flooding, and this is also the opening day for NARAM and we will have some of our regular crew out of town. My plan is to go to Buder on Tuesday before our meeting to check on the field conditions, and then discuss at the meeting whether we want to go forward with a launch. Please stay tuned to the website and / or email list for an update.
Leading smoothly into: SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, July 23rd, at our regular meeting location:
Fallon's Bar & Grill 9200 Olive Blvd. #116 Olivette, Missouri, 63132
The room will be available at 6:00 PM and the business meeting will start at about 7:00PM. Please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com if you have new business for the meeting.
Finally: it is time once again for SLRA to hold its annual election for directors and officers. Per SLRA's bylaws, we have between three and nine directors with the tally always being an odd number (traditionally seven) and four officers selected from among the directors: president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. Also by tradition, the Tripoli prefect and NAR section head are among the directors, although our bylaws do not require this and they simply run as regular candidates for the director positions. To simplify the process, we will hold a single election wherein the membership present at the meeting cast a vote for each of the officer positions in conjunction with a director seat, and then vote for three additional directors.
Our incumbents are: David Kovar (president and director), Jack Oney (vice-president and director), Dan Crank (secretary and director), Don Hanson (treasurer and director), John Buckley (NAR section head and director), Dan Welling (Tripoli prefect and director) and Rodney Riederer (director).
Jack Oney is no longer active in the hobby, and will run as a candidate for vice president. I (Dan Crank) would also like to hand the secretary job over to someone new, so I do not plan to run as a candidate for secretary unless no other candidate can be found. So we do have a need for some new people to step up to fill these posts.
The duties of the president include acting as the spokesperson of the club to media, other organizations, and the public, and coordinating special events in which SLRA is involved. Incumbent David Kovar is running for re-election to the office of president.
The vice-president has the same duties as the president, acting to assist the president or in cases when the president is not available. We do not currently have any candidate for vice-president.
The secretary is responsible for preparing the agenda for and keeping the minutes of club meetings, handling the legal filing requirements for our nonprofit status (these are minor), and managing communication with the club and the public, which is mostly done via email, our website, Facebook and Twitter. We do not currently have any candidate for secretary.
The treasurer is responsible for managing the club's bank account, taking receipt of income and making payments where necessary. Don Hanson is running for re-election to the office of treasurer.
If you would like to contribute to the management of the club, please consider running for office. If you would like more detailed information about the requirements, or if you would like to run for an office and have your name printed on the ballot, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com.
The rocket kits for the Apollo 11 event have arrived! We now have 72 Estes E2X Generic kits to put together before the July 20th event. (Link to Estes E2X instruction sheet)
As we discussed at the meeting last week, we will have a build session at Fallon's to get this done. Now that we have the kits in hand, we can go ahead with the tentatively scheduled date of Wednesday, July 3rd. We will have our regular meeting room starting at 6:00pm, and will be able to order food and drinks as we normally do.
Please bring along any of the following materials that you have and would like to contribute / share with the club:
I'll also repeat our previous call for volunteers (link to previous announcement) - if you will be able to help with the event on July 20th, please email John Buckley (jbuckley1996@gmail.com) as soon as possible, so we can start matching people with tasks and make sure everything's covered.
If you have any questions, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com. Thanks!
Our event for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is coming up on Saturday, July 20th. We will be running a "fly it - take it" event on the archery field adjacent to the St. Louis Science Center's McDonnell Planetarium, in conjunction with the other festivities SLSC is hosting. We will have 72 built model rockets ready to put in the hands of visitors as they take part in a combined spot-landing / precision duration competition - the spot-landing target being, of course, the moon! The first place winner of this competition will take home a trophy that includes an actual space-flown piece of foil from the Apollo 11 spacecraft, generously donated by Earl Mullins of the Space Museum in Bonne Terre, MO. If you've been around the club long enough to remember the 45th anniversary event we did in 2014 with Gene Kranz, you may recall that Mr. Mullins donated a similar piece of Apollo 11 space-flown foil as a grand prize then as well.
To make this event a success, we are looking for volunteers willing to help out on the day of the event. Setup will begin at 8:00am, the competition event will run from 9:30am to 2:00pm, and we should be cleaned up and done by 3:00 or 3:30pm. We will need volunteers of all levels of rocketry experience to help with registering visitors for the contest, timing and scoring the rocket flights, and talking to the public about hobby rocketry and our club.
As an incentive, SLRA club president David Kovar is making a generous donation of his own - an Estes Saturn V flying model rocket kit (1:100 scale) to be raffled off among our volunteers! SLRA would like to thank St. Louis Science Center for donating the rocket kits and motors for the competition, Mr. Mullins for donating the Apollo 11 foil for the grand prize, and Dave for donating the prize for the volunteer raffle.
If you would like to volunteer, please email John Buckley at jbuckley1996@gmail.com.
Although Buder Park has reopened, it is still too wet (with standing water on large portions of the field) for us to have a launch there this weekend. In order to allow competition flyers an opportunity to get a last round of flights in before NARAM, we have arranged to use the field adjacent to Bonne Terre Airport. The street address is:
7444 Williams Rd
Bonne Terre, MO 63628
The club's launch equipment will be available for sport launches, and John Buckley will act as the contest director for competition launches as usual. Range setup will begin at 8:00am and we have access to the field until 2:00pm.
If you have any questions, please email John Buckley or David Kovar.
Thank you to everyone who has sent us photos of Buder Park. As of yesterday, the park was still partially flooded and the road was not open all the way around. (David Pape's photo attached below - this is taken from near the entrance looking towards the GSLMA pavilion.) According to John Buckley, who was there yesterday, there were still large puddles everywhere and you would need boots to walk around. He does not plan to try to do NRC launches this weekend.
We will take another look next week, but it would need to dry out a lot in order for us to have our regularly scheduled club launch next weekend. I will send out another announcement late next week once we've made that final decision. Again, thanks to everyone who wrote in!
This month's meeting announcement is going out a bit earlier than usual since I have a couple of additional items to go with it. The meeting details are below.
A) We have a model rocket launch scheduled for Sunday, June 30th at Buder Park, which was flooded until (very) recently. The St. Louis County Parks & Recreation page no longer lists Buder as closed (hooray!). My first request for assistance is to anyone who lives or works near Buder and has a free moment to please stop by between now and then and confirm that the park is really open, and see what the condition of the field is. In particular, we'll need to know how much standing water is left behind (the corners of the field can be ponds for a few weeks after a flood) and how muddy everything is (particularly the southeast area where our new concrete pad and sign are). Please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com if you have a chance to reconnoiter for us. Of course, do not enter the park if it is closed, and do not put yourself at risk with respect to flood waters.
B) We have an upcoming July 20th event for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, in cooperation with the St. Louis Science Center. SLSC is purchasing 72 Estes E2X rocket kits for us to give away to kids to allow them to participate in a spot-landing contest, but we (club members) will be assembling those kits ahead of time. We had discussed using the June club meeting as a build session, but it looks as if the kits won't arrive in time for us to do that. We'll be looking for volunteers to either attend another build session in early July, or to pick up some kits from Dave Kovar to assemble at home and bring to the July 20th event. Details of this will be worked out at the meeting.
Thanks for reading this far! We now return you to our regularly scheduled meeting announcement:
SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, June 25th, at our regular meeting location:
Fallon's Bar & Grill 9200 Olive Blvd. #116 Olivette, Missouri, 63132
The room will be available at 6:00 PM and the business meeting will start at about 7:00PM.
If you're a member of SLRA and are registered on the website, you can view minutes of previous meetings here: Meeting Minutes Page, The meeting minutes will be the basis of our "old business" discussion.
Online and paper membership forms with payments received by mail to be processed by treasurer and president.
Please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com if you have new business for the meeting.