The Comercial Worked!

How much did you send in? I'll see if you can get your money back.

Phil Stein

Phil Stein

The ignorance of some people just kills me. Just because it aired once means the entire world must jump on the bandwagon. I know many people that know I do this hobby and laugh because it is something silly we did as kids and after the show know see the intensity and complication of the hobby, many have asked to be invited to the next launch. It is still going to take the local chapters out beating the street inviting people because this is so new to most. People are always looking for the easy way out. Donate some cash and say I did my part, BS, get out there and help the hobby yourself too. I keep hearing people bitch that the NAR and TRA would do nothing to help and when the did now people are bitching that the helped. Get a clue people, if you don't like the way it is going do something about it. Ignorance will be the downfall of today's society.

Bill Eide

People on rmr are deluded into thinking they are the center of the rocket world even though there are only about 200 of them and they are members of the "big" national [dis]organizations that represent a whopping 5000 of the nation's approximately 1 million rocketeers.

Must be nice to be in such ignorant bliss, eh?

LOCAL motion. It matters.

Jerry

Top 2 poster to the smallest but loudest bunch of screaming whiners on the planet.

What about the hit counter on the Flyrockets.com site?? I checked it Sunday before the first show aired it was under 200 hits. Let me check.....Its just about at 62000. I would say thoes are very good numbers.

RDH8

HARA has received two email inquiries so far. I went to a Boy Scout / Webelos campout last night and several folks (that already knew I was into 'big' rockets) said, "I thought of you the other day. I saw this show on Discovery Channel..." We've had a some good campfire chats. :-) Several of them are really interested in getting into rocketry. I'll be following up those conversations with emails today, and we'll probably have a lot more area scouts showing up at our launches in the near future. :-)

Chuck

Lots of people walk by the model rocket isle at Wal-Mart but not many pick a pack of C6-5's. Sell-through is the true measure of success. This week I bet a few more did.

The anecdotal reports of increased traffic at specialty hobby stores (retail) are encouraging. Despite mail order, despite the internet and even despite member associations like NAR and TRA trying like hell to kill lone rangers, that is still 95% of the market.

NAR/TRA clubs are tiny aberrations (under 5000 nationwide) as compared to the 1 million lone rangers keeping rockets on the shelves of mass retailers like Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, and every little mom and pop hobby store in the country. Including Centiri founder Lee Piester's Hobby Bench store chain in Phoenix, AZ.

I have asked rmr readers, NAR leaders, TRA leaders, etc, to GET A LIFE, but since they refuse, and fight it tooth and nail, GOD BLESS the LOCAL RETAILERS picking up the slack from the whiney, law breaking morons running the member associations.

Jerry

I would say those are Great numbers! But then I would stop and think, what sort of numbers did the Gate's Brothers see after their site was mentioned on slashdot? Enough to shut them down, but how many hits?

It's funny that some feel the need to attack because they equate a success/failure of a program, with the effort put into it. Saverocketry was {extremely} successful in it's effort to create a commercial and website to generate and direct interest. The stats from both flyrockets and club sites (IMHO) show that. However, that doesn't equate to success in it's goal to increase fliership, though it certainly opens the door to a large pool. Questioning it's success on early numbers (much like in an election) does not reflect poorly on the effort to date, which several knee-jerk responses have implied. A candidate may loose the election, but that does not mean his team didn't put up a good fight.

How would one even measure the non-club (lone flier) increase? 'Anecdotal reports' (as Jerry puts it) seems a bit inaccurate considering the volume that a place like Wal-Mart has the capacity to do over a hobby shop. We'll never know those numbers unless we can get an overall sales out of Estes. Add to that the fact that this is November and Santa is clearing out some inventories (possibly just because he saw the show and not the commercial) which will show a general increased trend anyway.

- The work done was extremely successful.

- How do we measure that the effort succeeded?

Joel. phx

All currently scheduled airings of the show will be complete by our December launch. How many new faces (not just fliers) would you _expect_ to see in the months following the show? What about at club meetings? (December will be excellent weather for flying down here so save the 'wait till spring' opinion).

The stated measure by the imagineers of the effort was to stave off bankruptcy of companies like PML, AT and others. I would say on that basis it is likely to be a dismal failure. I have clearly stated why before right here.

Plugging new blood into a system that already chased away 80% of the people/sales it gathered from a couple of decades of work from the founders/pioneers of HPR such as Irvine, Kline, Krell, Sobczak, Piester, Weber, and others, are the same folks that are managing the current clubs and launches that rmr is linked up to.

It will be Lone Rangers that save this hobby from its misguided and lawbreaking leaders. It was lone rangers that gave birth to HPR and LMR. It was lone rangers that gave birth to MR.

Lone rangers rock hard.

Yep.

Or a hobby chain like Hobby Lobby. Or a product line manager at Wal-Mart.

I can name a BIG one. THIS effort alone brought together ALL aspects of rocketry to a single goal. A goal that was indeed achieved. For that alone Frank Uroda and his associates involved in saverocketry.org and flyrockets.com will go down in rocklet history as astonishingly successful leaders.

Frank for TRA President, screw any claims of conflict of interest!

Everyone please go to

I think that the company that will benefit the most from all our efforts is Estes. People that saw the show may see a kit and grab one for little Johnny. I bet there will be a ton of Estes starter kits and models under the Xmas tree this year. Which of course sucks because Estes never so much as lifts a finger to help our end of the hobby.

The up side is that eventually many these new Estes rocketeers will morph into HPR.

-- Drake "Doc" Damerau

Better yet, go into a local store that stocks their product and buy 3 and save on shipping.

And when the store owner says, "U.S. Rockets who?", tell them usrockets.com.

Jerry

Here are some flyrockets.com stats courtesy of Greg Deputy

Date Page Visitrs Avg Visit Views Length

Sat 11/8/2003 3,071 903 03:15 Sun 11/9/2003 69,877 12,002 10:01 Mon 11/10/2003 81,676 12,169 10:03 Tue 11/11/2003 24,210 4,809 07:05 Wed 11/12/2003 13,157 2,921 05:09 Thu 11/13/2003 40,192 7,175 08:20 Fri 11/14/2003 39,182 6,115 08:05 Sat 11/15/2003 27,859 4,904 07:48

Sat 11/8 was the day before the first showing, provided here as a baseline. The largest volume was in the first airing sequence (all three shows back to back), where most rocketeers were tuned in and where several had organized viewing parties in sports clubs and elsewhere.

Note the visitor stat is 'unique' visitors for that day, a better indication of interest than the page counter on the website.

The feedback from FirstTV is that the show viewership results were impressive and atypical for a first run show. Yhere is no word from TDC as yet.

Thank you, Greg for all your hard work.

- iz

Robert DeHate wrote:

boycott Estes!

buy FlisKits, they are higher quality, and they always step forward to help the cause of rocketry!

- iz

Doc wrote:

I would like to see a similar tabular post of the ratings, preferably as compared to some top 5 DC show.

......as do the fine folks who make Shrockets.

ah, a tease, eh? ;o)

- iz

Chuck Rudy wrote:

Oh my! :-D

boycott Estes!

buy Apogee (for the same reasons stated below)

kits at

- iz

Ismaeel Abdur-Rasheed wrote:

It certainly did what it was paid to do: bring 60K hits to flyrockets.com. So far. Now it's up to the content we've put there to turn that around and get 10% of those people to come to a launch somewhere. 6000 new rocketeers would be money very well spent. Regardless of what level they participate in, MR, LMR, HPR, Amateur.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I finally got to see a tape of the show this weekend (spent the whole time inside with a nasty cold). I'd echo the comments of others re: unsafe practices (Tim smoking while prepping a big rocket, etc). But what surprised me is of all the stuff shown, I only saw ONE clear URL pointing me to a manufacturers web site. For Estes! If we don't learn anything else from this show, we should learn to ALWAYS put up some banners advertizing ourselves. And to put it in as many places as possible. Can't recall if there were any name badge closeups, but it needs to be there, on the LCO pannel (always a manditory camera shot in shows like this), etc.

And any time some group is negotiating with TV producers, make inclusion of a URL for the organization in the credits manditory. Phrase it diplomatically, like "we'll waive our video production charges in return for our URL being included in the show.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!