Remember John, "no good deed ever goes unpunished". It's too bad that some of your associates appear to be such ingrates. Gratitude is getting harder and harder to find. But you know something? That's on them, not on you.

I've heard similar things at club launches out here... "it's too far to drive, too remote..." and all this sort of jazz...

Sorta rankles a bit; does seem very petty and like being an ingrate. Yeah, I know-- it's 30 miles to Katy and 45 miles to downtown Houston-- but what did you have before?? A little bitty park that was being whittled away for more soccer fields, tons of trees being planted, and ponds dug in the only open spaces. Half the rockets flown ended up with road rash from parasailing across the paved parking lot on the wind after landing, and a quarter would end up across the road in a privately owned overgrown abandoned former rice field in waist-high weeds, grass, briars, and snakes, or stuck in trees, or falling victim to the occasional soccer hooligan...

At least here, the worst thing you have to worry about is stepping in a cow pie, and you can watch for those. Yeah, sometimes things go over the barbwire fence, but the fields next door have permission to search and retrieve your rockets. Yeah, tall sorghum across the fence in summer can be hard to find a rocket in, but at least it's a crop field and not overgrown, snake infested grass and weeds...

I can, in a way, see the point of LPR guys griping a bit about the drive... but then if there's a field closer and they can get permission to use it, more power to 'em. What I CANNOT understand is the HPR guys, which seem to be the biggest whiners and moaners of all, griping about having to drive a couple hours to the nearest HPR capable field. They won't bat an eye at spending HUNDREDS of dollars for electronics, hundreds more on reloads and casings, several hundred on a HPR kit or building supplies, spending weeks or months building a single HPR rocket, etc. etc. etc. but then balk at spending a couple hours on the road and $30 bucks in gas to get to a HPR capable field... I just shake my head and think to myself "cry me a river..." It's sorta like some of the top fuel dragster people I've heard of spending literally tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on their cars and equipment, and then b!tching about track fees, which are a pittance by comparison... Same "spoiled" behavior IMHO.

One of the club guys who was whining the loudest about the drive out here virtually promised the club that he was going to get permission to fly off a huge (but unkempt) open field that belonged to a megachurch nearby to him... course, after a lot of promising and posturing, that sort of just dropped off the radar for awhile. When someone finally asked him about it, turns out he did ask, and was promptly and firmly told "NO WAY" and that was that.

Great for Ironnerd that he got permission for the club to fly off this field, but if one expects kudos for it, well, good luck with THAT and lemme know how it turns out... Seems most club folks just want to b!tch, whine, moan, and complain, rather than actually do anything to improve the club's lot...

Later! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

C'mon noww, Luke !
Didn't ya know for the last 20+ years the national pastime in the USA is whinin', bytchin', and complanin' without DOING anything to help ?
Seriously, I know several people that are not happy unless they are whining about something.

The more people I meet, the more I like my Cocker Spaniel pal Macy and Boston Terrier pal Lucy.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

Yeah, I know what you mean...

Cute dogs...

The more people I meet, the more I like my cows...

If they get out of line, they end up on a grill... LOL

Later! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Gotta understand, we've been burned before over fields that were "ideal" when presented, but then something would happen that would make the field unusable, from landowner demands, to "upgrades", to other users of the field that we weren't told about. We've also been burned by not getting precisely the proper t's crossed and i's dotted.

The front field of the new site is actually about a third the size of the largest of the two current fields (which we use when there's no lacrosse), and half the size of the smaller. In addition, prevailing winds are usually west or close to it, which works to our advantage with the current fields, but go across the narrow dimension of the new field.

The larger field at the new site would be decent, but if people have to hike a quarter mile to it, it will NOT be very popular. Since the path looks like it was made for vehicles, I would hope there would be someway to have access to it for our launches.

BTW, here are the coords of the current fields: 34.118937, -84.375059. The field to the north is off-limits to us, both permission-wise, and fairly much physically too. That's a little grass runway running through the center of it, and things occasionally get interesting when the owner lands through the gap in the trees there.

The 1800 x 400' field is the one we fly on if the lacrosse teams are off; the triangular field with the track is the one we use otherwise. In fact, in the current Google Maps photo, you can see one of our launches just beginning on that particular field. That's a landfill to the southwest, and its height does some weird things to the low level wind patterns around the field. In the early morning buzzards and/or geese sometimes gather for aerobatic practice.

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Roy
nar12605

Well, Roy, y'all dodged a bullet. I does not look as though we are going to use the field as I had hoped. No reply from Cobb parks about my request for written permission to fly there.

My choices now are drive a hour to MSA and listen to people complain about the small field, or I can just go to a local park about that is a bit smaller, and fly with the kids.

My local parks and rec people will be receiving some nice Thank-you gifts for their open mindedness, and for putting up with the weird rocket guy.

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John Adams
"There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"

Well John, don't throw in the towel just yet. Give the Cobb County bureaucrats time to justify their paychecks and maybe they will do the right thing. I sure hope so.

I just found this thread and realized you were talking about a field about 20 min. from my house. I've recently gotten back into rocketry and have been intending to get to a SOAR launch event soon. The Alpharetta location is a bit of a hike for me, so a field on this side of town would 100% guarantee a new member.

I'll hook up with you guys one way or another, sooner or later, but a site in Cobb would certainly make it 'sooner'. Thanks for all your efforts so far on this. Here's hoping it pans out eventually!

I initially thought of the following in a joking way, but given the strange way our society and government are skewed today, it might actually smooth your path to getting--as well as getting to--the more distant field. Instead of using internal combustion vehicles, what if you all used portable electric vehicles (such as Segways or electric scooters) and--if their extra carrying capacity would be necessary--pack goats (see: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...le+Search&gbv=2 and http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...ruett+Series%29 ) to move all of the materiel from the parking area to that field? It would be convenient and green (and with Earth Day--April 22--coming up, no one could accuse the club of being "environmentally irresponsible"); even the flame-proofed tissue wadding would serve as "grass feed," after the first rain packed it into the ground.

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NAR #54895 SR

ha! yes, two or three golf carts would be ideal for that. Always liked the golf carts running around the Village in "The Prisoner."


John! Chill, man. I'm not dissing the field, just trying to be realistic. And keep on them about the permission. We need to keep with the STEM angle, the "no injuries compared to sports" angle, and the "fewer fires than cigarette butt-flippers" angle. We also somehow need to show them what the demand is for rocket flying. Not sure yet how to do that; maybe a comment section on the "where do I fly my rocket" article on the website to gather comments.

We have two people working on fields even farther out (Jasper, and such); one, a cow pasture (ugh!).

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Roy
nar12605