March Meeting Report
The March 2010 MASA meeting was held on the 4th
at the Science Museum in St. Paul.
A total of 20 people attended the meeting.
This was the biggest meeting turnout in some years!
Launch: The next club launch will be
on Saturday March 27, at the VFW soccer fields near Elk River.
This will be a misfire-alley style launch. Local TARC teams
are welcome to come and make qualification flight attempts.
There will also be discussion about adding an extra launch
opportunity for TARC teams.
Meeting: The next club meeting will be April
1 at the Science Museum. Glen Overby will be talking about
electronic recovery and electronic payloads.
Discussions
-
Remember the NAR membership drive - "52 by 52"
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Outreach: There are several upcoming
opportunities to help in outreach launches with Girl Scout
groups. More outreach events will be coming up in April.
Keep an eye on the mailing list for more details.
-
Remember to keep sending stuff Jeff's way for
upcoming issues of the Planet newsletter.
-
Keep working on those Fly-It / Take-It donations
for NARAM 52. If you are building one or more rockets for
the FiTi, please let Carol know.
-
MASA's 2nd regional contest is planned for the
first weekend in June. Watch the web site for the details.
-
MASA S/T Jason Colt reported that over 80
members have joined or renewed their MASA memberships so far
this year.
-
The MASA membership incentive drawing was held.
The names of everyone who had joined MASA or renewed memberships
for 2010 were placed in a hat. The two winners of $10 gift
cards to Hub Hobby Center were: Laura Carpenter and Cindy
Whitaker!
-
Todd Schweim and Caleb Boe will be heading to
Serbia this summer as members of the U.S. FAI Spacemodeling
Team. Todd let us know that a winery in St Croix Falls
will be holding a fundraiser to help raise money to pay for
their trip expenses. They'd like to fly some rockets
during the fundraiser, so he'll be looking for some MASA members
who are willing to come and help out. He'll make more
details available at a later date.
-
NARCON is coming up on March 13-14 in Worcester,
MA. At least two MASA members are planning to attend.
-
Several MASA members are already making plans to
attend NARAM 52 in Pueblo, CO.
Show and tell:
- Lyle Merdan showed an Aerotech parts guide tray that he
made.
- Jeff Taylor showed his mega-cool Steampunk ACME Spitfire.
- David Whitaker showed the A-10 boost glider that he made
from plans in Sport Rocketry magazine.
Level 1 and Level 2 High Power Certification
The evening's meeting topic was on Level 1 and Level 2 high
power certification. Alan Estenson lead the discussion.
Many people brought along high power rockets to the meeting.
If you missed the meeting, or didn't get a copy of the
packet, you may download a PDF of it:
L1 and L2 cert meeting handout March 4 2010.pdf
Of these in attendance, about half had their L1's and three
had their L2's already. Several people in attendance were
planning on pursuing their L1 and/or L2.
Over the years, there have been 24 Level 1 certification
attempts at MASA launches. 22 of those were successful.
The most popular motor used has been the Aerotech H128.
A bit over an hour was spent on the topic. Alan went
through some tips and recommendations, talked about motors and
rockets, and discussed the certification processes and the L2
written test. There was a lot of good discussion and
questions.
Lots of information on Level 1 and Level 2 certifications may
be found on the
NAR web
site.
[Alan Estenson]
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