“We Are On Ascent” ~ Vince Huegele
Thank you everyone for coming to the meeting last night. We had a great turn out with nearly 30 people in attendance and a lot of new faces. We kicked off the meeting with our guest speaker and a few pizzas. Mr. Chuck Pierce who is branch chief of Spacecraft Propulsion Systems at MSFC and has a rich background with space shuttle and hypergolic propulsion systems, shared with us the propulsion research being done here in Huntsville. Mr. Pierce brought along a space shuttle reaction control motor to show off. Thank you for speaking with us Chuck!
Mr. Pierce wasn’t the only one to bring some cool rocket stuff to show off. The visiting UAHuntsville USLI team Charger Rocket Works showed off their dielectrophoresis scientific payload which has applications for fuel management in the microgravity of space. Vince showed off his Marvin the Martian rocket built from a paper-mache bird house. Walt showed off his recent advances in composite rocket motor cases which promise big weight savings over aluminum cases. I showed off my developments in surface bonded fins. I invite everyone to bring in your rocket projects and show them off next month.
We have received our FAA waivers for Toney, AL and Manchester, TN launch sites. We are cleared to fly rockets up to 10,000’ AGL and have been granted clearance up to 20,000’ with the following caveats. HARA must notify the FAA 15 minutes prior to any flight to exceed 10,000’. They will either clear us or ask us to hold while they reroute traffic. Any attempt above 10,000’ carries great liability and will not be a privilege extended to flyers who have not consistently demonstrated reliability, safety, and responsibility. Flyers who wish to exceed 10,000 feet should petition HARA at least 48 hours in advance.
We kicked off our 2013 membership drive. The membership year will officially begin in March. If you renew your membership or become a member before the end of March, your name will be added to a drawing for one of two $20 gift cards to Huff Performance. You can become a member one of three ways: 1.) you may use convenient PayPal option on the HARA website, 2.) You may print off a mail-in form from the HARA website, and 3.) You may sign up at a launch with any HARA officer. Membership dues for 2013 are $20 for individuals, and $30 for families. Additionally, there will be a $5 flyers fee for every launch for non-HARA/MC2 members. These fees will help maintain the quality of our launch equipment, purchase new equipment, and cover other expenses.
We will have an equipment cleanup and checkout day on March 2nd starting at 10am at Chuck Pierce’s home. We will have our next club meetings on Thursday March 7th at the NASA ERC building beginning at 7:30pm. We will have our first “Tech Talk” of the year as we cover dual deployment recovery systems. We will get some reports back from Website and Local Sport Launch committees. The TARC workshop will begin at 6:30pm. Thank you Vince, Bill, and Woody for your fine work with those young rocketeers. Check us out of Facebook and send your photos to picoftheweek@hararocketry.org. HARA is on ascent!
Daniel Cavender,
HARA President
