At last night's meeting, we discussed the launch schedule for this year. With the heavy rain and now snow this winter, we do not expect either of our fields to be dry enough for a high-power launch in January or February. It is possible that we could have a scaled-back launch in Elsberry by flying off the gravel road, but this has some limitations and is kind of a last choice if we have no other options before crops go in.

We set dates for our Buder Park model rocket launches, but will replace either the March or April date with a high-power launch if the weather cooperates and field conditions allow. Of course, if we get a good high-power weekend at any time we can put a launch together.

The 2019 Buder Park dates are as follows:

• Saturday, March 30
• Sunday, April 28
• Saturday, June 1
• Sunday, June 30
• Saturday, July 27
• Sunday, August 25
• Saturday, September 28

Also, as John Buckley mentioned in an earlier post, we are planning a two-day event in cooperation with Tripoli MO-Kan at the Walnut Grove site near Springfield, MO. This is planned for May 18-19. This will be a NAR competition launch and will also have a high-power sport range with a waiver to 15,000 feet MSL (about 13,750 feet AGL).

Finally, many SLRA members are attending LDRS 38, the annual Tripoli national event, which is being held at the Kloudbusters Rocket Pasture near Argonia, KS over Labor Day weekend (the usual time and place of AirFest). We encourage all St. Louis-area high power flyers to make the trip and enjoy their 50,000 foot MSL waiver.

The calendar on the website has been updated with these dates, but as always, please watch the site or subscribe to the mailing list for changes. If you have any questions, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com.

SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, January 22nd, at our regular meeting location:

Fallon's Bar & Grill 9200 Olive Blvd. #116 Olivette, Missouri, 63132

If you are the winning bidder on items from our auction which is ending today, please plan to attend the meeting to pick up your kits! If you can't, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com to make alternate arrangements.

Another note: we will be talking about the 2019 launch schedule at this meeting, so if you want input on that, please plan to attend.

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.

The standard agenda for all meetings is as follows:

1. Treasury Status.
2. Recognition of Achievements
3. Recognition of Contributions
4. Members expenses.
5. Old Business - please review minutes for last month's meeting for topics
6. New Business

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.

• Our membership forms are now updated for the new year - if you're a current member and would like to renew, or if you'd like to join for the first time, please head to our website (http://dmortproductions.com/stlrocketry) and select "Join SLRA."
• Our online auction closes in just a few more days! There are some interesting items up for bid, so take a look at https://www.auctria.com/auction/slra2019.

If you have questions about either of these, please email me at admin@stlouisrocketry.com.

Dan Crank
Secretary, St. Louis Rocketry Association

Just a quick reminder that bids are now open in our fundraising auction (https://www.auctria.com/auction/slra2019). I'm seeing the first few bids coming in, so it looks as if everything is working as it should, but if you encounter any problems please email me at admin@stlouisrocketry.com. The auction will close at noon on Sunday, January 20 and items should be available for pickup at the club meeting Tuesday, January 22.

We have the website set up for our fundraising auction. This is our solution to get all those donated kits and other items back into circulation as well as raise money for the club. All proceeds (sale price minus credit card and website processing fees) go to the club treasury, to be used for purchasing new launch and safety equipment and maintaining our trailer and current gear.

Barring any technical difficulty, bidding on all items will open at 12:01 am on New Year's Day, and bids will remain open until noon on Sunday, January 20th. To discourage "sniping" of bids at the last minute, any bids entered in the last five minutes before the auction closes will cause the auction to remain open an additional fifteen minutes.

I'm strongly encouraging everyone to plan to pick up your items at the next club meeting, Tuesday, January 22 at Fallon's Bar & Grill in Olivette, or at a later meeting or launch. If that's not possible, you can email me to work out shipping, but I'm hoping to keep that to a minimum.

Here's the website: https://www.auctria.com/auction/slra2019

If you plan on bidding in the auction, you should be able to register now, and can register at any time while the auction is running. You do not have to register to browse through the items, which you should also be able to do now. When you register, you can optionally save your credit card number so you don't have to enter it during checkout, but you can hit "skip" if you want to wait and do it later.

A couple of things about the auction:

• Most of the kits are grouped into lots of two or three, since our auction software is limited to a total of thirty auctions.
• Several of the kits listed are out-of-production, and a few are quite rare - those are noted as (OOP) in the lot name. (Kits that are out of production by Estes but are still available through a major vendor like eRockets or JonRocket are not marked OOP.) Take a look through all the lots to see if there's something special you've been looking for.
• You will notice that many of the lots include an Astron Skydart II. We have a bunch of these left over from NARAM 58. If we can't get rid of them this way, we'll have to start hiding them in people's range boxes like the Easter bunny.

If you have any questions about the auction or any of the items, and especially if you find a problem of any sort, please email me at admin@stlouisrocketry.com. This is our first time trying this, and any snags we find now won't be problems once the auction is running.

Dan Crank
Secretary, St. Louis Rocketry Association

Bad news again (with a glimmer of good news).

The glimmer of good news is that the field in Addieville is starting to dry out, giving us hope that we can launch there at some point. However, due to a number of other factors (fairly serious cold, wind, low cloud ceiling, along with some key club leaders not being available) we have decided not to try to make it happen this weekend. I am well aware that a number of people are waiting to do certification flights, and I wish we could have made this work, but I'm afraid you are going to have to wait a bit longer.

We are also deep enough into the winter that we are less likely to have good weather than bad weather, and holidays are coming up. So rather than say that we're postponing the launch until a certain date (and sending out cancellation after cancellation), we are going to postpone "indefinitely" and put the launch back on the schedule when we have a combination of decent weather and available people.

Dan Crank
Secretary, St. Louis Rocketry Association

First things first - since our next regular meeting day (the fourth Tuesday of the month) falls on Christmas Day, there will be no club meeting for the month of December.

Secondly - surprising probably no one who has been checking the weather forecast like we have - the high-power launch is postponed another week due to rain, rain and more rain. Our launch date is now Saturday, December 8 and the location is still planned to be Addieville.

The rest of this post is a copy/paste of the earlier announcement, for your reference:

Range setup will begin at 8:30am and we can start flying rockets as soon as setup is done - so the more people that come early to help, the sooner we can start!

This will be a Tripoli launch held under Tripoli Research rules, so experimental motors are allowed for Tripoli members with the proper certification (although the RSO of course has the final say). There will also be a NAR NRC competition held alongside the high power launch and NAR members are welcome for either competition or sport / recreational flying. We will have 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4" launch rods along with 1010 and 1515 rails. If you are launching a rocket weighing more than about 20 pounds and need the "monster" launch pad, you must let us know ahead of time, as we may not bring it if it's not needed.

Our FAA waiver permits flights up to 17,500 feet AGL (approximately 18,000 feet MSL). If you are planning a flight over 10,000 feet AGL, please bring simulation results to show to the RSO, to avoid any risk of violating that waiver altitude. (We have a great relationship with the FAA and want to keep it that way!)

There will be a $10 launch fee for high-power fliers, to defray the cost of renting the porta-potty for the day. Model rocket flyers will have a launch fee of $3, but this fee is waived for paid SLRA members. These launch fees are per family and good for however many flights you want to do.

Here are the latitude / longitude of the flying field, along with a Google Maps link. You'll enter off Raven Rd. and proceed SLOWLY through the farm to reach the launch site.

38°22'23.2"N 89°29'24.8"W

https://goo.gl/maps/WsGywj5vKjG2

Please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com if you have any questions.

Dan Crank
Secretary, St. Louis Rocketry Association

SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, November 27th, 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.

The standard agenda for all meetings is as follows:

1. Treasury Status.

2. Recognition of Achievements

3. Recognition of Contributions

4. Members expenses.

5. Old Business - please review minutes for last month's meeting for topics

6. New Business

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.