NAR
National Events for 2009 Awarded
The NAR National Events Committee
has announced the award of all three of its premier national events for 2009. Each of these events will be setting up
websites and providing further information via Sport Rocketry and this
e-newsletter.
NAR Convention (NARCON 2009) - to
be held March 20-22, 2009
in Wethersfield, CT,
just south of Hartford, CT. Sponsored by CATO NAR Section, Event Director
Event Director Al Gloer.
National Sport Launch (NSL 2009) -
to be held Memorial Day weekend, May 23-25, 2009 at Richard Bong State
Recreation Area, just west of Racine, WI.
The event website
is http://www.nsl2009.org.
Sponsored by WOOSH NAR Section, Event Director: Scott Goebel.
NAR Annual Meet (NARAM-51) - to be held
August 8-14, 2009 near Johnstown, PA.
Sponsored by Pittsburgh Space Command NAR Section, Contest Director Steve Foster. Events will be: 1/8A HD, A SD, 1/2A PD
(mr), Random Alt, B R/G, B Altitude, D Dual Eggloft Dur, Peanut Scale, SciFi and
Future Scale, R&D.
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A Message from the New NAR President
Trip Barber, NAR 4322
Greetings!
I am honored and humbled to be the eighth
President of the organization that has been such an important part of my life
for so long. I have been a member of our
National Association of Rocketry and an active rocket flier continuously for
over 45 years and I count among you its members many of my closest
friends. My NAR experiences have given
me skills that have served me well in my professional career with the U.S. Navy,
and they have taken me to places and events that are among my best
memories. I feel a deep obligation to
this organization to take my turn doing the work of "paying forward" to ensure
this kind of opportunity remains available to all of you and to future members
of the NAR. I will always give the NAR
and you its members my best effort.
My years in
the NAR and especially my last 14 years as its Vice President have made me
appreciate how diverse the interests and personalities of its members really
are. You range from youth group leaders
and members to hard-core model rocket competitors to Level 3 high-power
fliers. It's all good, and it all
belongs in our NAR. As NAR members, we
share a fascination with all things that fly vertically on a roaring rocket
motor. Regardless of the size or power
of the rocket, every flight fascinates us.
We are all rocketeers together, and proud of it.
As your
President I will be guided, and will lead the organization, by three principles
that I believe represent the core of what the world's first and best sport
rocketry organization is all about.
First, BE
SAFE. Our hobby is inaccurately perceived
by the public as "dangerous" despite over 500 million flights that have proved
exactly the opposite. We battle this
perception almost every time we try to get a new launch site or start a new youth
rocketry activity. The NAR's superb
50-year safety-leadership reputation with public safety officials is the most
powerful single tool we have for sustaining the hobby's future. One bad accident or irresponsible action
could reverse the hard work of generations of NAR volunteers and jeopardize the
reputation and insurance that is critical to our launch site access. Our Safety Codes are based on excellent
engineering analysis and lots of experience.
We must all live by them, every flight.
We must simply not fly any rocket whose flight might present a safety hazard to people or property. The desire to fly must never supersede the
obligation to do so safely.
Second,
HAVE FUN. This is a hobby, a
discretionary activity that we pursue for recreation and friendship. If you let a difference of opinion about some
aspect of this fun activity become a basis for anger directed at a fellow
rocketeer in person or online, lighten up!
If you cannot, you should think about finding another hobby so the rest
of us can enjoy this one. And if you see
a fellow NAR member doing all the hard work in running a section or a launch
and not having the opportunity to fly, lend him (or her) a hand so they can
have a chance to have some of the fun that sustains us all in this hobby.
Third, PAY
FORWARD. This is what our late founder,
G. Harry Stine, used to tell those of us who asked how we could ever repay him
for all he had done to make such a difference in our lives. Rocketry is a craftsmanship hobby in a
society where such hobbies are increasingly rare. Yet as every public launch we do
demonstrates, our hobby still has magical appeal to those who experience
it. Each of us should feel an obligation
to spread the word about the rewards of rocketry and the benefits and
camaraderie of the NAR, and to spend at least a little of our rocketry time
helping or teaching others who want to try the hobby. If we do not do this, where will the next
generation of rocketeers and NAR members come from?
I will do
my best to ensure that this Association effectively and efficiently delivers
the services that you most value, within these guiding principles and within
the limits of the resources of the dues and volunteer labor that you, our members,
provide. I value your suggestions on
what we should do in the future and your feedback on how we are doing in the
present. Please contact me at president@nar.org if you have either.
I particularly want to collect both feedback
and suggestions widely and systematically here at the beginning of my tenure,
so I ask every NAR member to help me by taking a new online survey on how we
are doing and what is important to you. The survey is at http://www.nar.org/membersurvey.
Finally, I want to recognize and
thank Mark Bundick for his extraordinary service and contributions to the
NAR. Mark has spent a record 32 years as
a member of the NAR Board of Trustees, including 14 years as your
President. With his business management
skill he has built a fully solvent and soundly managed organization, and the
hobby's best magazine. He has been the
driving force in our hobby's long legal battle against the unjust regulation of
the BATFE. Service to the NAR and to its
members has been his passion for his whole adult life. Next time you see him at an NAR event, please
shake his hand and thank him for what he has done for all of us.
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The NAR and our partners at the Aerospace Industries
Association (AIA) have announced the rules for the Team America Rocketry
Challenge (TARC) for 2009, the seventh year of the NAR's most successful "pay
forward" outreach program. These rules are
posted on the TARC website www.rocketcontest.org,
and on the NAR website's Team America page.
TARC is an annual model rocket-based engineering design
competition for teams of 7th through 12th grade students
from around the U.S. Its purpose is to encourage students to
pursue a professional career in the aerospace industry and a lifelong hobby of
rocketry. Each team is "challenged" to
build a model rocket (3.3 pounds and below, G motors and below) that carries a
raw egg payload to a precise altimeter-measured altitude and stays aloft for a
precise flight duration, with the objective being to get as close as possible
to these goals and not break the egg payload on landing. The 650 to 750 teams who enter each year
conduct local "qualification" flights by early April, observed by an NAR senior
member, and report their scores to TARC headquarters. The best 100 teams based on these scores are
invited to a national head-to-head flyoff in mid-May just outside Washington,
DC, where the top 10 teams split a prize pool of $60,000, the top 20 or so
teams become eligible to participate in NASA's Student Launch Initiative
program, and the overall winning team gets a free trip to that summer's Paris
or Farnborough (London) Air Show.
The TARC 2009 challenge is to fly one egg (which must be
oriented sideways in the rocket, not the typical lengthways orientation for most
egglofter rockets) to 750 feet altitude and a flight duration of 45
seconds. TARC registration opens on September 3, 2008 and closes on December
1 or whenever 750 teams have registered, whichever comes first.
NAR members are encouraged to volunteer as local "mentors"
to provide advice and/or launch-site
support for student TARC teams in their
area, and to help encourage schools, teachers, and students to form teams. Team size must be between 3 and 10 students,
with no more than 4 teams from any school or nonprofit youth group. Contact Trip Barber at ahbarber@alum.mit.edu to volunteer as a
NAR mentor and help the NAR "pay forward".
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NAR
Awards $6,500 in Scholarships and Teacher Grants
Each year the NAR shows its support
for teachers and students who are active in our hobby by sponsoring cash awards:
Robert L. Cannon grants to teachers (who do not have to be NAR members) to
support their classroom rocketry activities; and NAR Scholarships to students
in post-secondary educational institutions who are NAR members.
Each grant or scholarship totals $500, and are renewable. The Cannon grants are funded
by the revenue from a benefit auction of rocketry materials held at each NARAM,
and the scholarships are funded out of the NAR General Fund (your dues). A committee of NAR leaders, led by NAR Trustee Dr. Joyce Guzik, reviews applications that are submitted by May 1 each
year and announces the awards at NARAM.
Applications and details can be found at http://www.nar.org/teacher.html. Please help in spreading the word about the
NAR's support for rocketry in schools, and encourage eligible teachers and
students to apply.
This year the NAR has awarded 8
Cannon Grants and 5 NAR Scholarships, a total of $xxxx for direct NAR support
of people in schools who are involved in rocketry. The recipients are:
Cannon Grants
Ann Alter, Blue Springs, MO
Diane Dorn, Ringwood, IL
Jeff Kaloostian, Riverview, Fl
Mordechai Levin, Richmond, IL
Daniel Maloney, Troy, NY
Chantelle Rose, St. Paris, OH
Leonard Johnson, Park Ridge, IL
Shane Obrigewitch, Berlin, WI
NAR Scholarships
Micahel Adams, Ohio State Univ.
Cameron Aument, Univ. of Maryland
Benjamin Levison, Univ. of Toledo
Adam Rechtenwald, Kent State Univ.
Caroline Steele, Univ. of Utah
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Fly 50,000 for our 50th Numbers Growing! NAR members are helping kids fly their first rocket as part of the NAR's 50th Birthday celebration. You can read the details from my announcement to NAR members last year. Members can also check results showing flights by NAR sections and individuals as we show kids today how much fun rocketry can be.
Please consider finding a young person in your community and assisting them in flying their first rocket today!
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NARTS Has "Rockets of the World"
 NAR Technical Services announced at NARAM-50 that THE book for scale rocket modelers, Peter Alway's "Rockets of the World" has been reproduced and is now back in stock, ready to ship! In over 380 pages, it details over 200 versions of 133 rockets from 14 countries. Packed with 198 dimensioned and color keyed drawings supplemented by 178 photographs, it's your one stop source for scale data. Each copy is $30, plus $9 shipping and handling.
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