Model Forum / General / Rockets / March 2006

Anyone ELSE?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

and quite animated....

Beerlofting in the lobby was pretty much fun also.  The Marriot staff
was very tolerant of the noise and the glass-topped table survived a
record SECOND straight year!  Good times!

I had another great time at NARCON. My hat's off to the whole WOOSH gang for
pulling off three great conventions.

It was great to see both Lee and Matt, and to hear their stories. I brought
a table full of Centuri memorabilia for the old rocketeer gathering, and had
Lee autograph several items for me.

Bunny was rather animated while discussing the BATFE situation inthe town
hall meeting. He rightly pointed out that the latest court ruling leaves
them between a rock and a hard place. Also discussed were the recent changes
to the HPR safety code.

I went to Brent and Dean's router session. They had nice jigs for cutting
centering rings and for making fin slots on an inexpensive router table. Not
for Bertha sized rockets, but the way to go for HPR.

I attended Ted's discussion of the safety comittee report, along with
Warren's talk on how they run HPR launches at JSC and deal with all their
restrictions.

Michael Wolff's talk about the Mars Rovers was cool. Except for the video
snafu that prevented us from seeing the 3D images, it was a neat talk. Some
may remember my old friend Geoff Landis, who was also part of the rover team
at JPL.

Peter Alway gave an interesting talk about the soviet moon program.

I ran into Tater Sunday morning, on the other side of the room inthe NAR
section panel. Got some tips there to put into use at both of our sections
here.

The two sessions I presented were in the two right-after-lunch slots. Lee
returned on Saturday for the old rocketeers gathering inthe manufacturer
room. I wasn't the only one who had him autograph stuff. I WAS the only one
with the big LJ2 that I had him autograph, along with a Mini-Max motor and a
catalog.

Sunday afternoon I closed out the weekend giving my talk on advanced
construction techniques for competition models. The session was surprisingly
well attended considering that half the participants left by lunchtime.

The mark of a good convention was how many people were disappointed that
they couldn't get to all of the sessions they wanted to attend. There were
several times I had to pick between 2 (or in one case four) sessions I
wanted to attend. Worse, there were a couple sessions I wanted to attend at
the same time as the 2 sessions I led.

Hit Bobby Nelsons cheese shop on the way home. Not as big as Mars next door,
but all they carry is the local stuff fromthe local farmers. My daughter is
the 4th generation of Kaplows to shop there.

Finally, the hotel was definitely NOT a Ramada. In fact it was WAY too nice
for a rocket event. It almost seemed a waste, since we never got to use any
of the facilites other than the room. We'd have been just as happy in a
Super-8.