Archive for Vince Huegele

| July 2, 2021
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Foggy TARC Finals reap Fifth, Ninth place for Alabama

It was a foggy morning June 12 when the launch began but the ten finalist teams from Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee attended and made all twenty allowable flights. When all the scores were tallied nationally Russellville High School Team One from Russellville, Alabama came in fifth and won $8500. Tharptown High School, also from Russellville, made ninth. Alabama was the only state besides California to have two teams finish in the top ten. Hosted by the Birmingham Rocket Boys NAR section and led by President Ronald Dunn plenty of volunteers were on hand to set up, run the range and score the flights. It was an admirable performance by NAR to complete the TARC program for the pandemic year by spreading the finals out to ten regional fields. HARA was represented by Vince, Bill and Duane, who had fun with various timing and scoring duties. No eggs were broken by the teams, but two flights ejected the motors and unfortunately had to be disqualified.

 

 

Here are the finals scores of the schools at the Birmingham launch.

Place            School            City        State  Total Flight 1  Flight 2

5 Russellville City Schools (Team 1) Russellville AL 23.6 21 2.6
9 Tharptown High School Russellville AL 25.56 4.74 20.82
32 Creekview High School (Team 1) Canton GA 56.68 7 49.68
35 Russellville City Schools (Team 2) Russellville AL 62.68 31.56 31.12
41 Winfield City High School Winfield AL 68.48 36 32.48
44 Hackleburg High School Hackleburg AL 75.62 54.62 21
46 Creekview High School (Team 2) Canton GA 77.7 20.62 57.08
62 Lincoln High School Lincoln AL 113.82 73.38 40.44
88 Stone Memorial High School Crossville TN 9.24 DQ 9.24
89 Hewitt Trussville High School Trussville AL 13 DQ 13

 

Category: TARC |
| May 31, 2021
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Seven Alabama TARC Teams Make Finals

In a very anomalous TARC season that began in 2019 these teams from Alabama scored in the top one hundred ranking nationally and will compete in the finals to close out 2021. It’s almost the same group that made the finals last time. http://hararocketry.org/hara/six-alabama-tarc-teams-going-to-finals-in-virginia/

The schools and cities are:

Tharptown High School T1, Russellville
Lincoln High School, Lincoln
Russellville High School T1, Russellville
Russellville High School T2, Russellville
Winfield City High School, Winfield
Hewitt-Trussville High School, Trussville
Hackleburg High School, Hackleburg

Other Alabama teams selected as alternates are:

Tharptown High School T2, Russellville
Civil Air Patrol – Redstone Composite Squadron, Huntsville
St. John Paul II C.H.S.,  Huntsville

The cutoff score for making the top 100 this year was 37.06, which is respectable considering the contagion circumstances. It was 36 in 2019, the last “normal” year. There were 615 teams in TARC-2021 and although many of them were never able to get together, build, and fly due to COVID, TARC still ended up with 282 teams submitting qual flight scores.

Rather than have the finals with all 100 teams in Virginia as usual, the finals will be broken down to eleven regional sites with fewer teams present on each field. The Birmingham Rocket Boys NAR Section will host TARC June 12. The results from those flights will be sent to TARC headquarters which will compile the scores and announce the winners at the TARC 2021 Awards ceremony (online) on June 28.

Congratulations to these teams for their success and the opportunity to represent the state. Russellville High won first place in TARC in 2015.

Category: TARC |
| March 17, 2021
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Schedule goes fluid for when the field is not

The frustration of having to cancel or slip launch dates due to bad weather or muddy field conditions prompted the officers to move the March launch up a week from the 13th to the sixth to match a favorable forecast. The decision allowed the club to be out on the Butler Mill field for a beautiful day of flying; clear sky, mild temps and moderate wind. HARA had a diverse manifest with certs and college team flights, novel mid power rockets, a shuttle glider, a high-power 2 stage, and a high power drag race that was more eventful than planned.

For more photos and an awesome video from John Kraieski’s very upscale Mars Lander sparky ascent and four legged landing see https://www.facebook.com/HARA-Rocketry-182522918458853/  Thanks to Gene, Greg and Patrick for contributing pictures!


 



Category: Launches |
| November 24, 2020
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Launching in a November Sky

The autumn colors of red, orange and yellow decorated the trees in the mountains of north Alabama but also the flames of the rockets flying at the monthly HARA launch. After being rained out in October and waiting since March for the field to be cleared the club was out in full force to launch into a mild calm November sky. The pads were particularly busy with HP certification flights.  The crowd was present when the waiver opened at 10 am and was solid until sunset.

For a more detailed discussion of the day go to Bill’s blog at http://billsrockets.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-perfect-day-for-flying.html A multitude of rocket pictures are on the HARA facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HARA-Rocketry-182522918458853/

 

 

Category: Launches |
| August 31, 2020
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World Record Finally Certified

On July 16, 2019, the rocket center attempted to launch 5,000 model rockets in an effort to set the record as part of a week-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. More than a year later, it’s official. Guinness certified that 4,923 rockets fired and reached at least 100 feet in altitude – a requirement for the record. No reason was given why it took a year to announce the record, the paperwork was filed with the numbers a few days after the launch. The previous Guinness World Record of 4,231 model rockets were launched at Teylingen College during a European Space Science Convention in the Netherlands, in the summer of 2018.

An army of volunteers assisted rocket center staff in the rocket launch preparation, with 178 volunteers working 696 hours over 13 sessions to build the rockets. Twenty volunteers worked 75 hours to build the wood frames on which the rockets were placed. see last year’s post http://hararocketry.org/hara/witness-the-spectacle/

Category: Uncategorized |
| March 15, 2020
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Rain and Redemption

It takes a lot of faith to load up rockets on a morning when it’s sprinkling rain. Then more faith after you arrive at the field to sit in the car to wait for the shower to pass at noon. But when you finally squish your way out to the pad and the motor exhaust smoke from your flight just hangs over the rack because there’s no wind you’re glad you made the trip. HARA got out on ‘pi’ day (3.14) and enjoyed a mild winter afternoon after two months of denial due to floods.

The motor count for Saturday taken from the flight cards shows most of the thirty flights were high power.

  • 1/2A           1
  • B                1
  • C                1
  • D                2
  • E                4
  • G                2
  • H               13
  • I                 2
  • J                2
  • L                2

Almost all of the H flights were for L1 Certification. The two L flights were by the UAH student team shown prepping in the above photos. For another story on the UAH rocket see –https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2020/03/nasa-student-launch-works-around-covid-19-restrictions.html

Category: Uncategorized |
| February 1, 2020
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Winter Outreach

HARA was invited by the Space and Rocket Center to host a display on MLK day. Six members spent the holiday showing off rockets and talking about launching to the guests, many who were families touring the facility. Kids really like seeing the small models and everyone is impressed with the large ones asking, “do those really fly?” In clear skies, yes.

Category: Outreach |
| December 22, 2019
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Merry Christmas from HARA

Category: Uncategorized |
| July 19, 2019
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Witness the Spectacle

Fifty years to the minute that Apollo 11 lifted off the US Space and Rocket Center set a Guinness record for mass launching the most model rockets. Of the 5000 Pathfinder models loaded on 1/2A62 engines, 78 failed to launch and 44 failed to reach the required 100 foot altitude, but still beat the Teylingen College in the Netherlands record of 4,231 model rockets launched in summer 2018.

The event was under the direction of the USSARC assisted by local aerospace sponsors and employee volunteers. Aside from some local members helping on their own to load the racks and a few who built kits, there was no connection to NAR. HARA had approached USSARC last year but they already wanted to do this Guinness record attempt rather than a scale Saturn V model launch or a Land the Eagle type event.

The weather Tuesday morning was great but getting hot as the Sun rose on fifty pallets each of a hundred rockets. Each nozzle sat on an e-match pushed through a hole in a wooden slat and as long as it stayed aligned it was good to go. The loading was completed on time with no technical glitches as the large digital countdown clock rolled along. A thousand space campers, a thousand more spectators and 175 volunteers chanted the seconds and watched as the wall of smoke rose in the flight field. A large cloud instantly formed in the sky as 4922 ejection charges fired to deploy mylar streamers. Then it rained rockets. Fortunately all pieces landed in the prescribed area well away from any spectators. What earlier had been an immaculately orderly range was now littered like a Mardi Gras parade route with landed rockets and, oh yes, all that wadding.

 

Wearing his NAR cap Rus Hardy of Birmingham corrects an alignment.

HARA Prefect Art Wooding and VP Allen Owen rack them up.

“as my first act with this new authority, I will create a grand rocket clone army of the Republic.”

The launch had the collective impulse of an ‘L’ motor.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

Meanwhile later that day Hope Rising’s TARC team flew models at Pegasus East to commemorate Apollo 11. For another report on launches that day see Bill’s blog at http://billsrockets.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-celebration-begins.htmlreoprt

Category: News |
| April 25, 2019
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Rockets and Pants

Last June we told about HARA’s project to help Levi’s jeans do a photo shoot for a fashion ad- http://hararocketry.org/hara/vintage-rocketeer-jeans/ and promised to post the pictures when they came out. Well, the spring collection is released and here are some representative shots from the portfolio, mainly ones with our rockets in them. It’s a nice homage to the ‘rocket boys’ style of the fifties and the amateur dreams of spaceflight.

 

Category: News |
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