National Association of Rocketry

Electronic Rocketeer—What's Happening in Rocketry

Message from the NAR President

Fellow NAR Member,

I will start with wishing all our members a Happy New Year!  2025 was a year of change for the NAR with the roll out of a new website and membership platform. Overall, the transition went well; we had a few issues that came up but they were resolved by our staff and Club Express. This year we will focus our staff and leadership efforts on member experience, growing our membership, and retaining young adult members.

To start this new focus, we rolled out an updated experience for NARTREK Junior and NARTREK Senior programs. Both programs target rocketry enthusiasts who are new to the hobby and want to have a structured learning process as they learn to build and fly model rockets.

We are now implementing a new feature for high power rocketry, specifically for Junior and Level 2 HPR certifications the testing will be online and integrated with your NAR membership account. To find the testing procedure log into your NAR account on our website, put your cursor on the Members tab at the top of the page and then click on Continuing Education at the bottom of the drop-down menu. You can also use this link: Continuing Education.

You will also notice that we are featuring a banner with our advertisers in the eRocketeer. We want to support our advertisers and the manufacturers/vendors in the rocketry community and hope you will visit their websites to see what they have to offer. The hobby is strong because we have the support of manufacturers and vendors to make and sell the products you use.

Please be safe out there.

John N. Hochheimer

NAR President

NAR 74537 L3

Were you participating in the previous version of NARTREK?

American Rocketry Challenge Flying

Registration has closed out for the 2026 American Rocketry Challenge program and there are 1,047 teams registered from all across the USA. See the list. This is the biggest year ever; more than 5,000 young people in grades 6 through 12 are enrolled as teams of 3 to 10 students in the NAR’s biggest outreach program and the world’s largest student rocket competition.  All of them are hoping to be one of the 100 teams that wins an invitation to the national Finals on May 15-16, 2026 and gets to compete there for the program’s $100,000 in prizes.  But to earn a spot they have to first fly locally and submit qualification flight scores, signed by an NAR adult member as their official observer, by the March 30 deadline. And to do that, they need to figure out how to design, build, and fly rockets that meet this year’s challenge flight objectives. All the program details and rules are on the event website, www.rocketrychallenge.org.

These eager young students are the future of our hobby and the US aerospace industry.  NAR members and sections are encouraged to “pay forward” by supporting these teams as they learn and fly. Show them how to do rocketry safely and welcome them to your launches.  250 of the teams have asked to be connected to NAR mentors to coach them on basic rocketry skills. If you would like to be one of these mentors, or if you are available to come to the national Finals to serve as part of the NAR range crew there (and we need NAR members to do both of these) please contact the NAR’s ARC Manager, Trip Barber at ahbarber@alum.mit.edu

Membership 8,584
Family: 574

Junior: 428
Life: 143
Young Adult: 2,509
Senior: 4,245
Senior Plus: 625
Teacher + Students: 60

HPR Certified
Jr Level 1: 187

Level 1: 2,172

Level 2: 1,643
Level 3: 678

Changes to the Junior and Level 2 HPR Testing Process
As of January 5 2026, the Junior HPR and Level 2 HPR tests are online, these will replace the written tests that have been administered in person by a proctor. 

The online exam must be completed prior to the certification flight attempt. Visit the Continuing Education tab on the NAR.org website and Apply for your HPR certification. Once you have studied for your HPR certification, follow the emailed link to the HPR Online Exam test. Upon passing the test, you will receive an Online Exam Completion certificate. To access your certificate, log into the NAR.org website and visit: Your Name/Profile/Your Website Functions/Continuing Education. This certificate is required (in printed or electronic form) before making the certification flight attempt.

The NAR will still accept written tests that are less than a year old at the time of your certification flight and taken on or before January 31, 2026. When filling out the Digital Junior Level 1 HPR Certification Form, the last attachment is for your JrHPR Level 1 Exam Completion Certificate, or your Written Exam. 

Contest Rocketry News

Competition Zoom Meeting

I will be hosting a monthly zoom for members who would like to talk about competition.

This is an open meeting for any NAR member who wants to see what is going on in competition.

The next meeting will be held on Saturday January 10th at 9pm (ET). If there is a topic you would like to include, please send me an email. Join in and meet with competitors from across the country.

Please register for the meeting using the following link.

Read more about it at the NAR latest competition news.

Mentoring and Outreach

In conjunction with the increased selection of FAI events for NRC and NARAM, the contest board is actively trying to recruit, provide resources to and help train contestants to build and fly FAI and NRC models.

I am putting together a mentoring list so that anyone who needs some competition help can get in contact with someone who is willing to help.  Please add your name and contact info to the following spreadsheet if you would like to be contacted by those in need of competition help.

If you would like to get help with competition, then send me an email and I will see what we can do to help.

NAR Competition Mentor List

NARAM 67 Update

CD: Matt Steele

Date: Sunday June 28 to Thursday July 2

Location: IAC Muncie, Indiana

Events: 2025-26 NRC events and…

 Concept Sport Scale

 Scale  (Please note that the Scale Altitude event has been removed)

2025-26 NRC Events

For the 2025-26 Contest year, the following NRC events have been chosen...

1/2 A PD FAI

1/2 A SD FAI

1/2 A HD FAI

A RG FAI

C Egg Loft Altitude

A Altitude

This slate of events was chosen to support the increased participation of FAI contestants, especially juniors, in NRC and NARAM.

Have You Read a Good SDS Lately? 

We use many chemicals, including adhesives, fillers, and paints, in the process of constructing our rockets. These materials often have associated safety hazards. A Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) was the “go to” document to identify the safety hazards. The MSDS was replaced by the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) starting in the early 2000s. SDSs have a 16-section format with signal words (Warning or Danger), standardized statements, and hazard pictograms. 

As an example, I referenced the SDS for Bob Smith Industries (BSI) Cyanoacrylate Insta-Cure (referred to as CA below), a product commonly used for rocket construction. The section numbers and titles are standardized for all SDSs. Section 1 contains the product and company identification. Included with the contact information are phone numbers for the Poison Control Center and Transport Emergency as well as the company URL.

Section 2 is the Hazards Identification. This includes an Emergency Overview, Hazard Class description and Hazard Category numerical rating where 1 is the most severe and 4 is the least severe, Pictograms, and Precautionary Statements. The precautionary Statements identify Prevention, Response, Storage, and Disposal actions. The CA SDS identifies eye irritation with a warning in the Emergency Overview, has a Hazard Category of 2A for eye irritation, and shows a pictogram of an exclamation mark indicating an irritant.

Section 3 is titled Composition/Information on Ingredients. This section includes the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Registry Number; this number is a universal system to identify chemical substances. This section may be important to some if allergies to included substances are suspected.  Section 4 describes First Aid Measures with subtopics including Inhalation, Skin contact, Eye contact, Ingestion, Symptoms, and Notes to physician. Section 5 covers Fire Fighting Measures.  Topics within this section are Extinguishing media, Special firefighting procedures, Unusual fire or explosion hazards, and Hazardous combustion products. Section 7 covers Handling and Storage. Section 8 is titled Exposure Controls/Personal Protection. This section identifies area ventilation, respiratory protections, eye/face protection, and skin protection. Section 10 identifies Stability and Reactivity including hazardous reactions, hazardous decomposition products, and incompatible materials.  Conditions to avoid are also listed in this section.

Not all 16 sections may be applicable to the limited material quantities most hobby users might have.  ections 6 (Accidental Release Measures), 9 (Physical and Chemical Properties), 11 (Toxicological Information), 12 (Ecological Information), 13 (Disposal Considerations), 14 (Transport Information), 15 (Regulatory Information), and 16 (Other Information) will typically not apply or they contain specialized information not useful to the layman.

Product labels are essentially abridged versions of an SDS. For individuals wanting more information on the chemical products they use, the Safety Committee recommendation is to download the SDSs for the products that you use and keep them in a notebook within your shop.

Stephen Lubliner