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September Meeting Minutes (9/8/2009)
The September 2009 MASA meeting was held on the 3rd
at the Science Museum
A total of 8 people attended the meeting.
Next Launch: The next regular launch will be
September 26 at the sod farm near Nowthen. The launch theme is
"multi-staging". A Deuces Wild drag race is planned.
Next Meeting: The next meeting will be
on October 1 at the Science Museum. Suggestions for a topic
are needed!
Stuff
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The various MASA launch sites may now be viewed
on Google Maps. A link to this has been added at various
places on the web site.
-
A preliminary 2010 club schedule has been added
to our Google Calendar. This may be viewed on the Events
page on the web site.
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The August launch had perfect weather and 184
flights.
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At NARAM 51, the MASA Planet newsletter won the
LAC trophy for best NAR section newsletter for the second year
in a row! Congratulations to editor Jeff and thanks to
everyone who contributed! As always, Jeff welcomes your
contributions for upcoming issues.
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An outreach opportunity will be coming up at the
end of October to help a group of Cub Scouts build and launch
rockets. More info will be sent out on the mailing list.
-
NARAM 52 will be held in Pueblo, Colorado.
NSL 2010 will be held near White Sands, New Mexico.
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Club President Alan wishes to remind everyone
that he will be retiring from that position at the end of 2009.
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Extreme Rocketry magazine has stopped
publishing.
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MASA members had fun and did well at NARAM 51
and the FAI competitions. It sounds like several club
members are already planning to attend NARAM next year.
Show -n- Tell
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Alan Estenson brought his rocket "Back to Cool"
- built from a dollar store crayon bank. He also brought a
vintage Estes Power Pulse launch controller.
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Jason Colt brought a rocket that he built from
spare parts and a "sputnik style" twine ball rocket.
-
Lyle Merdan showed us the results of a paint
problem he had with his new Semroc Vega. He also had an
under-construction P-Chuter Extreme.
-
Since Caleb wasn't there, Ted blinded us with
the glare from the many shiny medals that Caleb won at NARAM.
Cornfields
The evening's discussion centered on how to find your rockets in
those evil, evil cornfields. By far the best idea was:
Don't let your rocket go into the corn in the
first place. ;-)
We discussed methods for helping to find a rocket that has
disappeared into the corn. These included:
- Audio beepers, buzzers, and other noisemakers.
- GPS
- Really, really, really long streamers.
- Radio tracking
- Have the person in the corn hold a flag to mark their
location, and be directed by an observer outside the corn using
FRS radios or cell phone.
- Having a highly trained golden retriever named "Gus".
- Psychics in hot air balloons.
(Alan Estenson)
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