possibilities for creating a bill to avoid regulation of model rocketry

Jan 18, 2005 92 Replies

When I first saw HPR it was a bunch of renegades, who I felt would cause problems. Of course it makes sense to allow 125 Grams of propellant in a single MR/HPR motor. Certainly HPR has been a good thing, and should continue. I also remember thinking, "Wow!, N and M motors, I'n surprised that our government lets us play with those, let alone O and P motors." I personally do not fly HPR, but that is simply because I have not had the need to, that is, no mission requirements that require the use of HPR motors. Of course if I lived in the great "wide open", and had money to burn, I'd be burning it in HPR and Amateur rocketry.

I've asked a couple times about the need other rocketeers have for HPR. I never get a technically satisfying answer. The answer I get is that the HPR rocketeers need is simply to assert their rights and freedoms. Of course I'm thinking, "Jeez, why don't they just write letters, or organize demonstration marches, or something." At one point after a HPR rocketeer discussed his other hobby, amateur astronomy in RMR, I tried to prime the pump and suggested that a need for HPR might be to loft a telescope/camera just above the fog or low cloud cover, so that he does not lose a needed sequence of observations. The HPR flyers not only rejected that as a use for HPR, but failed to offer any other need, or technical requirement for HPR. Nevertheless, HPR is a good thing, even if HPR flyers don't articulate a technical justification for it.

What concerns me more is that the HPR battle has changed the NAR and diverted resources and attention from the fundamental MR aspects. I particularly object to the recent NAR dues increase. I don't begrudge the money spent on the HPR battles. However, before they redouble those efforts, I'd like to see them win some battles for MR like easier, cheaper, shipping of MR motors, and perhaps even getting them back on passenger airlines as they were before ValueJet.

That just sounds wrong. While some HPR regulation may be appropriate, The BATFE is the wrong organization to do it.

Smoke 'em while ya got 'em.

Alan

As of right now...YES I AM!!! Seriously, I bet every expansion team(FL et all) will be gone before this owner(and it is the owners at fault) crap pans out :(

Hell, I'd be playing if it weren't for my knees....

Ted Novak TRA#5512 IEAS#75

OK, I can understand that.

a book on legal carrying while traveling says to stay out of that state.

I saw a map calling that area mini-will-in-ous ?

State registry of firearms is a pre-cursor to confiscation.

Only CO2 solution I have seen uses black powder to puncture the canister. If you can tell me about one that doesn't it would save me a lot of headache of searching for usable parts to make my own.

Not a precursor. Probable cause to confiscate EVERY firearm they come accross pending an investigation on the validity or presense of the permit.

Jerry

Well, let me give you my reason to go into HPR. First I plan on building some electronics packages to measure different aspects of the atmosphere and magnetic fields. Second, I want to test building techniques verses in flight stresses(including at supersonic speeds). Third, I have plans on building and testing a steerable parachute system for rockets and the prototype will weigh quite a bit. And Fourth, I want to spread my knowledge to children and hopefully I can get more children interested in science.

I that I could probably search around and find a bunch of the information I am looking for but I also want to use rocketry to learn and if I just looked it up I wouldn't learn anything.

I've had a FOID card for years, I've never been asked if I have guns, or how many, what type. The card has to be renewed every five years.

do you think that is ok ?

I think that is the camel poking the nose under the tent.

Model rocketry, maybe. There's not much else you can do with a modroc but to try to make it look interesting.

Paint schemes mean nothing to me other than a way to help me find the rocket after I've launched it. (Although I do appreciate looking at nice paint jobs on other people's rockets.)

Color of the smoke, and the noise of the motor may rank pretty high on the "cool" factor but are still less important to me than the flight profile.

Of course, I'm one of the few people in HPR who flies with a specific goal in mind (aerial photography). Many just fly for the "cool" factor, and I really don't see why anyone would have a problem with that.

Yep. The problem is, there's no scientific, or even legal, basis for adding any material to the list of regulated "explosives". Some bureaucrat at ATF just decides, "oh yeah, let's add that one" and voila! Which seems to make it difficult to prevent anything from being added to the list, or to challenge someone after it's been added.

is John Kyte still in the NAR budget for this and next year? what the heck is he doing? just wondering..

shockie B)

I'm not sure where or how launching small personal ICBM's became an issue of rights and privilages and freedom....... from what I see and hear, a lot of the HPR crowd are angry white men right wing extremists(wait a minute, that describes Me!) , who somehow confuse the right to own and launch small personal ICBM's with personal freedom.....

and I really agree with the fact that NAR seems to have been taken over by the HPR people and thats the NAR agenda now.....

shockie B)

T-shirt I recently purchased:

I am NOT Environmentally friendly..... heheheh

Welll... even the largest HPR projects are far from "intercontinental" - most would scarcely even be usable as "inter-county baggage movers".

(Although as a kid flying Estes rockets, I did dream of having one that was big enough to ride in, and with some kind of steering - I wanted to set it up in the driveway, launch myself into the air, and have it parachute down at a considerable distance from the launch site, so that I could quickly visit distant friends...!)

And as for "why should it be an issue of freedom?" etc. - well, why not? Is there anything specific about rockets that should exempt them from the general right to do anything that doesn't unreasonably interfere with everybody else's right to do the same? (If I go out to Black Rock and launch a 40 pound,

9 foot long rocket on an "L" motor just to watch it go, does that interfere with anything at all of my neighbors' activities? I don't think so...)

And, especially, just as the gay community in this country ended up serving as the "canary in the coal mine" with respect to the spread of AIDS, so we should take the fact that members of the government are willing to use sport rocketry as an expendable sacrifice for "anti-terrorist" brownie points, or merely to let it be lost in the cracks of the "New Securitarian Regime" that they're so clumsily eager to implement, as a "heads-up" of a larger danger to liberty, as a sample of the sort of government we're dealing with: one that Americans ought to resist, if nothing else, as a matter of national honor and style - as the American thing to do: have you not heard the phrase "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"? Don't you think that the regulatory issues facing sport rocketry are the sort of thing to be taken, by those aspiring to such "vigilance", as an early warning?

We may not have sought out this battle, but since historical circumstance has placed us on this unlikely front line, it has become ours to fight... Are you more concerned to "try to stay out of trouble" than to put the "New Securitarians" _in_ trouble and take the country back? Have you surrendered in your soul, already, to the supposed "inevitability of the post-9/11 Security State", such that your mental energies go toward thoughts of appeasement instead of resistance?

-dave w

shockwaveriderz wrote:

I still look at it as a tax that served/s no real purpose.

have you been reading the Turner Diaries again ?

shockie B)

no permit may be required for hybrids but if you live in one of the many NFPA compliant states, you must first have a L1 cert from either the NAR/TRA to even purchase such hybrid..... of course nobody knows if they live in a NFPA compliant state, not even your state fire marshall, so I guess this requirement is moot or at least ignored by sellers and buyers....

shockie B)

Besides, a hybrid is inert until loaded with fuel and oxidizer... empty, it's just hardware (like a casing for a solid motor). I can go ahead and buy the

5 grain M casing for my Aerotech 75mm hardware in advance of any level 3 cert arrangements; the fire codes have no jurisdiction over threaded bits of aluminum pipe...

Now if someone were to be selling nitrous fills "on the fly" at an NFPA-spec 1122/1127-style launch, they might certainly want to work within the "certification level" system and not just blindly fill a motor of arbitrary large size for someone with no record of flight experience... but then again, nitrous is available over the counter (from auto supply stores for racing cars), so it's perfectly legitimate for someone to show up at a launch and say "I want to do a level 2 attempt on this 'ere hybrid... I got gas 'n everything..."

In other words, any cert requirement on the "purchase of a hybrid motor" (unless specifically applied, for example, to reload kits containing pyro materials) is going to be impossible to enforce or even apply reasonably in practice...

(Sssshh...! Don't tell the folks making water rockets out of plastic soda bottles that their activities may now fall under of the jurisdiction of 1127 as of the most recent revision...)

-dave w

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