R&D design paper on rocket gliders

[I apologize for the February meeting announcement which got sent to some of you - obviously an error.]

The third and final post from last night's meeting is the R&D paper presented at a past NARAM entitled "Development of a Series of Rocket Gliders for 1/4A Through G Power." John brought a D motor powered example of his design, which is pictured below, and made the paper available to our members. Thanks, John!

2016-04-12 18.33.51
Figure 1: D Rocket Glider in launch configuration. The motor pod is held in place by a string which passes over the motor's ejection charge.

rocketglider_2
Figure 2: D Rocket Glider in glide configuration. After the ejection charge burns through the string, a rubber band pulls the motor pod back.

[gview file="http://dmortproductions.com/stlrocketry/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PFE-Scan.pdf"]

Tuesday, January 12, 2015 General Membership Meeting Announcement

SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, January 12th, at our  meeting location: Google Map Link

Bandana's Bbq Sunset Hills
11750 Gravois Road
Sunset Hills, Missouri, 63127

We are continuing to meet at  Bandana’s BBQ Sunset Hills. Even though Bandana’s Sunset Hills doesn’t have a minimum food purchase, we are encouraging members to purchase something to support the use of the room. We have the room from 6:30 to 9:00 and we’ll need to leave promptly since 9 pm is the closing time.

The room will be available at 6:30 PM and  the business meeting will start at about 7:00PM. We'll need to be out of the room by 9:00 PM (closing).

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 comment on this post or email admin@stlouisrocketry.com if you have new business for the meeting.

Website maintenance update (and test post)

The website move to the new server is now complete! This post will be a test to see whether our updates will still reach you via email and Facebook as they did before.

Passwords have been reset for all users. When you want to log in, please log in with your existing user ID and password, then click "lost password" on the next screen which appears. You will receive an email with a link to reset your password.

The next step will be opening up the membership forms so everyone can pay their dues. I will begin working on that later today.

If you have any problems with the website, please email admin@stlouisrocketry.com. Thank you for your patience!

Website maintenance

We will be transferring the SLRA website to a new internet provider over the next several days. If all goes well, this will require no action on your part; it is possible, however, that we will have to generate new passwords for all registered users and provide them to you by email. The website will be unavailable for a period of time which we will try to keep as brief as possible, but we hope that by doing this during the winter when we have no launches, it won't be an inconvenience.

If you do not currently have a user ID and password on this site, please do not register as a new user at this time. We are making backups right now which will be used to rebuild the site on the new server, so any new registrations made right now will be lost. Also, please hold off on paying 2016 dues until we are done with the move.

If you have problems with the website after the transition, please let me know via email at danno@danno.org.

Sorry – no launch in December

At last night's meeting, we discussed the possibility of squeezing one more launch into this season, but the group's feeling was that the ground was still too wet and muddy to try to use the field this week. With more rain predicted for this coming weekend, we ruled out the 19th as well.

Please stay tuned to this website and/or our Facebook page for announcements about next year's launch schedule. We are aware that several club members are not receiving email notifications when posts are made here; we hope this problem will be solved when we switch internet providers in December / January.

Please have a safe and happy holiday, and we'll see you in the new year!

Tuesday, December 8, 2015 General Membership Meeting Announcement

SLRA is having our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, December 8th, at our  meeting location: Google Map Link

Bandana's Bbq Sunset Hills
11750 Gravois Road
Sunset Hills, Missouri, 63127

We are continuing to meet at  Bandana’s BBQ Sunset Hills. Even though Bandana’s Sunset Hills doesn’t have a minimum food purchase, we are encouraging members to purchase something to support the use of the room. We have the room from 6:30 to 9:00 and we’ll need to leave promptly since 9 pm is the closing time.

The room will be available at 6:30 PM and  the business meeting will start at about 7:00PM. We'll need to be out of the room by 9:00 PM (closing).

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 comment on this post or email danno@danno.org if you have new business for the meeting.

December launch update

SLRA members:

The heavy rain last week has ruled out December 5th as a launch possibility, so I wanted to go ahead and notify everybody that that date at least was off the calendar. Our next club meeting is on December 8th, and we will discuss the possibility of putting a launch on either the 12th or the 19th - but please keep in mind that with the wet weather, the odds of this being possible are fairly low. Feel free to join us at the meeting if you would like to participate in the discussion, and look for another announcement after the 8th.

Model rocketry accident in California

This tragic news comes to us by way of NAR President Ted Cochran:

I regret to have to announce that our hobby has experienced an on-field fatality. Based on initial news reports, a very experienced Boy Scout leader helping out at the annual Rocket Rave event in California lost sight of a rocket after it was launched and was struck in the face when it came down. Please keep Michael Bentley in your prayers.

The most detailed report I have been able to find is here: http://www.pe.com/articles/bentley-786423-rocket-event.html

I have no additional information at this time.

Please review safety procedures at your next launch, including your procedures for tracking, pointing at, and calling heads up for rockets that present a hazard to participants and spectators.

A GoFundMe page has also been established in Mr. Bentley's name at https://www.gofundme.com/MikeBentley.

Gauging interest for a December high-power launch in Elsberry

At our last club meeting, we briefly discussed the possibility of having another high-power launch in Elsberry, sometime in December. There are three Saturdays between the holiday weekends: December 5th, 12th and 19th.

Our equipment officer, who very generously gave his time and effort to make the October Elsberry launch possible, is available for another launch, but out of consideration to him and his schedule we would need to decide on a date and stick to it - assuming that there is enough member interest to have a third high-power launch this fall.

Therefore, consider this a survey - if you would be interested in attending a high-power launch in Elsberry on one of these three dates (December 5th, 12th or 19th), please reply by email to danno@danno.org by Saturday, November 21, with a brief description of what you would like to fly (including equipment needs), whether you are attempting a certification flight (and with which organization), and which of the three dates you would be available.

On November 22 I will tally up the responses and we will decide whether to plan another launch date. Regardless of whether we work in another launch date this season, I hope we can all agree that this has been a very successful year for SLRA and that we all owe thanks to Dan Welling and John Buckley for organizing and managing our October and November events.