WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ANTI-DRAGRACE SENTIMENT???

Well, now that that's settled, can we move on to addressing this prohibition congress recently passed on beer, wines and spirits?

Steve Shannon said:

We actually brought up the changes at the members meeting at LDRS in April. I realize that not everyone can attend LDRS, but we definitely brought it up as a discussion point, including the fact that due to the recent vote at NFPA we would remove the word "twice" from the HPR Safety Code, which actually reduced the "ridiculously stupid launch distances" to the Safe Launch complex distances that have existed for years.
So a drag race with 10 J motors takes place at the same distance as a cluster of 10 J motors.
The precipitating event that initiated this change was the change by the Technical Committee at NFPA to remove the word "twice" from the rule setting safe distances for mass launches.
There was no intent to target any group or any launch, merely an effort to make our Safety Codes consistent.


Steve Shannon

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Steve... No offense, but if flyer meetings at LDRS is your communication strategy, that sucks. And the TRA website and forum is not an effective communication strategy either... Want proof, have the website manager give you stats on user data. It's super simple. Aside from that, it requires an active step from members to go to the site rather than receive communication from the board. The email system/newsletter works just fine. I find it odd that rule changes and discussion of possible rule changes doesn't occur in that format when emails reach ALL members.

For future, I'd propose that being proactive is better than being reactive. I work with several organizations as secretary, and anything major like this would always be tabled until after input from all members, and that would happen via an announcement, an online place to send your input, and a proper period of time. It's the least we do to ensure that our member-led organizations are actually member-led instead of top-down. It saves us tons of time on the back-end also because we're not putting out the fires of discontent after major changes.
... Just some tips I've learned working in non-profits for a long time. If Tripoli it's an organization by the members for the members, then we really should be much more involved in changes that will affect how we operate at the prefecture level.

My experience with non profits is that you can't force people to get involved. They simply slide along letting others do the mundane work. Then something happens hey don't like and suddenly hey ask why they weren't involved in that action. But have no interest in all the other hard work that's been done in that time frame.

The fact that the deag race change happened YeARS ago, was recently RELAXED to a closer distance, and everyone is now tearing the BOD when they actually just made it easier to drag race, bears this observation out.

and the initial change was well publicized, I also recall they sent all members a new safety code on cardstock

DavidMcCann said:

The fact that the deag race change happened YeARS ago, was recently RELAXED to a closer distance, and everyone is now tearing the BOD when they actually just made it easier to drag race, bears this observation out.

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^This. Members have an obligation to pay attention as well. The NFPA rule making cycle that implemented this rule change I think started along time ago. I remember a thread during the comment period on this NFPA revision on Rocketry Planet (!).

I think part of the issue is some people have misintrepted the rule, or outright ignored it and continued to hold drag races at lower distances. I know as far back as when we held LDRS people tried to convince us the rule didn't apply and we could hold a high volume drag. We canceled it due to the distances required by the code.

DavidMcCann said:

My experience with non profits is that you can't force people to get involved. They simply slide along letting others do the mundane work. Then something happens hey don't like and suddenly hey ask why they weren't involved in that action. But have no interest in all the other hard work that's been done in that time frame.

The fact that the deag race change happened YeARS ago, was recently RELAXED to a closer distance, and everyone is now tearing the BOD when they actually just made it easier to drag race, bears this observation out.

and the initial change was well publicized, I also recall they sent all members a new safety code on cardstock

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To your first point, you can't force people to get involved but you can be proactive in providing the opportunity to get involved.
To your second point, you keep saying that, but Steve just pointed out that the change happened in May. So... There's that.
To your point about new safety rules... I didn't get one. So... Nope.

For what it's worth...
Those that want to drag race can go anywhere they have permission to launch and do so.
Regardless if they are NAR, Tripoli or members of any other club.
Nothing says a group of "Good Ol' Boys" can't go have fun when they want to.

DavidMcCann said:

Well, now that that's settled, can we move on to addressing this prohibition congress recently passed on beer, wines and spirits?

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CzTeacherMan said:

To your first point, you can't force people to get involved but you can be proactive in providing the opportunity to get involved.
To your second point, you keep saying that, but Steve just pointed out that the change happened in May. So... There's that.
To your point about new safety rules... I didn't get one. So... Nope.

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the drag race rules went into effect years ago. People did ignore them. The NEW rules Reduced the distances in may. Do you get this yet?

note this post from 2012 talking about it- https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?45277-Drag-racing&p=435005#post435005

CzTeacherMan said:

Steve... No offense, but if flyer meetings at LDRS is your communication strategy, that sucks. And the TRA website and forum is not an effective communication strategy either... Want proof, have the website manager give you stats on user data. It's super simple. Aside from that, it requires an active step from members to go to the site rather than receive communication from the board. The email system/newsletter works just fine. I find it odd that rule changes and discussion of possible rule changes doesn't occur in that format when emails reach ALL members.

For future, I'd propose that being proactive is better than being reactive. I work with several organizations as secretary, and anything major like this would always be tabled until after input from all members, and that would happen via an announcement, an online place to send your input, and a proper period of time. It's the least we do to ensure that our member-led organizations are actually member-led instead of top-down. It saves us tons of time on the back-end also because we're not putting out the fires of discontent after major changes.
... Just some tips I've learned working in non-profits for a long time. If Tripoli it's an organization by the members for the members, then we really should be much more involved in changes that will affect how we operate at the prefecture level.

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Not a flyers' meeting, the Annual Meeting of the corporation.
I realize most people don't go to the website or the Tripoli forum, but online those are the only places where we will make official announcements or discuss future changes. We also send out the Tripoli Report to all members who have provided correct email addresses.
I've tried to be more open by my posts here and on the Tripoli Facebook page, but official business is required by the bylaws to be discussed in a closed forum.



Steve Shannon

Steve Shannon said:

Not a flyers' meeting, the Annual Meeting of the corporation.
I realize most people don't go to the website or the Tripoli forum, but online those are the only places where we will make official announcements or discuss future changes. We also send out the Tripoli Report to all members who have provided correct email addresses.
I've tried to be more open by my posts here and on the Tripoli Facebook page, but official business is required by the bylaws to be discussed in a closed forum.
Steve Shannon

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Again, the annual forum at LDRS is obliviously not attended by all Tripoli members. That's obvious.
An email is still closed.
And maybe we can change those bylaws.

CzTeacherMan said:

Again, the annual forum at LDRS is obliviously not attended by all Tripoli members. That's obvious.
An email is still closed.
And maybe we can change those bylaws.

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you failed to address the forum. It's open to you, and you failed to go there to stay current.

Thats on you, not the BOD

Woody's Workshop said:

Nothing says a group of "Good Ol' Boys" can't go have fun when they want to.

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Nothing at all. You just can't leverage the organizational insurance if something goes wrong. That may not matter to everyone. However I doubt if a bunch of guys are going to go out and set up for a drag race of HPR rockets.

1. It's likely they won't have the gear
2. it's likely they won't have the site

For what it's worth, I used to really enjoy the mass launches until the L900 race at LDRS in Potter. When I saw two large (4" x 9') rockets collide less than 100' off the pad, i realized that could have gone horribly wrong. Want to race two big rockets? -> knock yourself out. Heck, I might even play along. Want to race a bunch of black powder paper rockets - good on ya. I just think folks should consider that there may be some safety considerations (that cannot be proven statistically without hurting or killing people) that seriously merit erring on the side of caution.

DavidMcCann said:

the drag race rules went into effect years ago. People did ignore them. The NEW rules Reduced the distances in may. Do you get this yet?

note this post from 2012 talking about it- https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?45277-Drag-racing&p=435005#post435005

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David,
Quit focusing on the Tripoli Commercial Safety Code and go do some research on the recent changes made to the Tripoli Research Safety Code. Once you do that I'm guessing you are going to have a "duh" moment.

BBrown said:

David,
Quit focusing on the Tripoli Commercial Safety Code and go do some research on the recent changes made to the Tripoli Research Safety Code. Once you do that I'm guessing you are going to have a "duh" moment.

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ill do that. I was under the impression we were discussing commercial drag races, but I'll look further on lunch today

BBrown said:

David,
Quit focusing on the Tripoli Commercial Safety Code and go do some research on the recent changes made to the Tripoli Research Safety Code. Once you do that I'm guessing you are going to have a "duh" moment.

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ok. I reviewed the changes. It appears they cut the distance required for drag races in half. This thread is complaining they "banned" drag races.

I didnt stay at a at a holiday inn last night so someone help me out here.

CzTeacherMan said:

Steve... No offense, but if flyer meetings at LDRS is your communication strategy, that sucks. And the TRA website and forum is not an effective communication strategy either... Want proof, have the website manager give you stats on user data. It's super simple. Aside from that, it requires an active step from members to go to the site rather than receive communication from the board. The email system/newsletter works just fine. I find it odd that rule changes and discussion of possible rule changes doesn't occur in that format when emails reach ALL members.

For future, I'd propose that being proactive is better than being reactive. I work with several organizations as secretary, and anything major like this would always be tabled until after input from all members, and that would happen via an announcement, an online place to send your input, and a proper period of time. It's the least we do to ensure that our member-led organizations are actually member-led instead of top-down. It saves us tons of time on the back-end also because we're not putting out the fires of discontent after major changes.
... Just some tips I've learned working in non-profits for a long time. If Tripoli it's an organization by the members for the members, then we really should be much more involved in changes that will affect how we operate at the prefecture level.

Click to expand...

Eric, there is a reason that the email list went away. It was seen by many clients as spam type stuff. Even when it was not being seen as spam, the rate of adoption was not very good.

You wanna watch a drag race......go see a fireworks display

markkoelsch said:

Eric, there is a reason that the email list went away. It was seen by many clients as spam type stuff. Even when it was not being seen as spam, the rate of adoption was not very good.

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Thanks Mark,

I didn't know that, and fair enough. I had the same problem with the ICCA (Illinois Chess coaches Association) back in 2012. However, in the 5 years since, our email response has quadrupled; I think it's the changing times and email becoming more ubiquitous than it was then. Of course, every set of membership is different, and Tripoli has a very different clientele than the ICCA.
Basically, on this point, I'm just saying that it helps to make an active step to reach out to membership than telling them to go find it when they don't even know there's something to find. It's hard keeping up with everything single thing I'm involved with, so I personally, respond better when an organization notifies me that there's something I might be interested in. But again, TRA it's a different group with different issues.

DavidMcCann said:

ok. I reviewed the changes. It appears they cut the distance required for drag races in half. This thread is complaining they "banned" drag races.

I didnt stay at a at a holiday inn last night so someone help me out here.

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David,
There used to be a special research drag race rule in the Research Safety Code that was adopted because of the additional distance that was required by NFPA. When we got rid of the word "twice" in the HPR Safety Code drag race rule we got rid of the special rule that had been created in the Research Safety Code. So now we only have the one rule.
You're not missing anything.
If you want to see what the special rule said, it's this, from the redline version we placed on the Tripoli site:


7.5.3.1. Each rocket participating in a mass launch (more than 3 rockets simultaneously) shall be at least twice the safe distance for that rocket’s total installed impulse. (This is not applicable to members of NAR. If they participate in a Mass Launch at a Research Launch, that mass launch shall comply with the requirements of NFPA 1127).

What that rule did was create a safe distance for each separate rocket, based strictly on the installed impulse within that rocket and without considering how many other rockets, of what impulse, were flying. That's why a launch could have 10, 20, or any number of K motors at 700 feet. (The complex distance for a K motor is 350 feet).
If different impulse motors were used you could have had rockets launched at multiple different distances, J motors from one distance, K motors from another. It's difficult enough to track when they all go off from the same distance.
Note too that the presence of a non-Tripoli NAR member would have caused the entire drag race to comply with the NFPA rule, which was the same as the HPR (commercial) launch rule.
So now we have one drag race rule that works for both Research and HPR launches.
To put actual numbers to it, three small K motors, such as the K550 can be drag raced from 500 feet, but 10 larger ones will end up farther out, probably at 1500 feet but possibly even 2000 feet depending on the total installed impulse.






Steve Shannon

Thanks for the breakdown.

This has been a very interesting thread. A true and healthy "community discussion"....pretty much like it's supposed to be. Lots of strong (and differing) opinions, a fair bit of facts and reason, folks staying mostly civil, some humor and off-point tangents, and yes even a bit of hyperbole, hysteria, and misunderstanding. For the most part though, it's on point and this community is actually "working it out amongst themselves", trying to come together on where we stand as a whole. I like it.

For myself, I gotta admit that I'm pretty ambivalent about the issue. On the one hand, I enjoy a good drag race now and then. They can be exciting and fun. And I know how important they are to folks like CJim (who drags like no other, and who I have a lot of respect for). I think there is a place for drag racing in our launches, and it would be good to keep that option "on the table". On the other hand, there is a part of me that thinks "meh" and can do without them just fine, and I sometimes see them as a waste of 3 or 4 or 5 really cool individual flights. And I absolutely do think of them as pretty questionable at the very least in terms of safety.

I'm using quotations marks around the word "safe" in this post because it's not really about safety. Safety itself is something of an illusion, and sometimes a dangerous one as at times folks can get complacent if they are told that something is "safe". And also, no matter how you reason it out, flying rockets is inherently dangerous. Notwithstanding comments like "driving to the range is more dangerous", we need to be honest and admit that launching rockets is absolutely more dangerous than not launching them. Even if it's just and Alpha on a C motor. And yes, it's even more dangerous to launch multiples at once....don't be silly and claim that it isn't. But this does NOT mean that it can't be done in a "reasonably safe" manner.

Our ability to launch as freely as we do is hugely dependent on the good self-policing rules and regulations, and proper risk management policies, that we have in place. And we really need to keep that in mind, and keep updating and refining our standards....trying to find and maintain that balance of being free to do what we do, but doing so in a "safe" and responsible manner that will keep the law and public opinion from shutting us down entirely. While it may be satisfying to imagine ourselves as totally free to do whatever we want, launch whatever/whenever/wherever/however we damn well please, let's face it...that is just not the way it works. OUR community has to live and work within the greater community as a whole. So, sensible and reasonable self regulation and policing are a necessity. THIS is what will preserve our freedom to buy, build, and fly rockets. Hence the NAR, Tripoli, etc. And hence this community forum to help us work it out. Let's find a workable common ground, let's have a great time at the next launch, and let's perhaps hope that there will be a ("safe" and responsible) drag race. My bet is on CJim to win it if there is.

s6

DavidMcCann said:

Well, now that that's settled, can we move on to addressing this prohibition congress recently passed on beer, wines and spirits?

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Not so fast! I want to know why I couldn't fly my N-powered monocopter at the Cub Scout launch!

Larry Curcio said:

Not so fast! I want to know why I couldn't fly my N-powered monocopter at the Cub Scout launch!

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Well duh! You can't fly that with the cub scouts sitting on the monocopter blade! Not without seat belts at least!

Paraphrasing G. Harry Stine from The Handbook of Model Rocketry: Don't do it....it resembles a fireworks display

Duh moment.

Having two sets of rules, esp one that could backdoor the other was always odd.

Im glad to see it changed to what was logically intended. (*ducks*)

stealth6 said:

Our ability to launch as freely as we do is hugely dependent on the good self-policing rules and regulations, and proper risk management policies, that we have in place. And we really need to keep that in mind, and keep updating and refining our standards....trying to find and maintain that balance of being free to do what we do, but doing so in a "safe" and responsible manner that will keep the law and public opinion from shutting us down entirely.

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I'm way late to the discussion, and I'll apologize in advance for not quoting all the folks who have inspired the following thread. I just want to provide some observations as someone who was on the NFPA committee at the time.

TL;DR: Code making is public. If you don't like the outcome, get involved. The drag race rules were derived from empirical evidence.

NFPA does codes through a consensus process. Periodically the code is reviewed and revised in a four stage, public process. Literally everyone can contribute suggestions, these are adopted or not by the committee, published for public comment, reviewed and modified (or not) again, and then published for final adjudication before being adopted. The Pyrotechnics committee includes mostly Fireworks industry experts, manufacturers, users, and regulators, with a smattering of rocketry folks. The two groups typically respect each other's subcommittee recommendations if they are not controversial. The rocketry members are reps from NAR, TRA, two Special Experts, four manufacturers, and some law enforcement folks with crossover interests. All the commenting and reviewing is open, internet-hosted, and participation by interested parties is welcome. If you care, get involved.

IIRC the drag race rules adopted in the process culminating in the 2013 Code revisions to both 1122 and 1127 (and both organizations' safety code revisions thereafter) were consensus rules adopted with constructive discussion and little dissent.

The motivation included two separate sources. For Low Power, there were the increasingly huge Boy Scout mass launch record attempts, which evolved into filling the infield of a football stadium with 1000s of rockets and launching them with crowds in the bleachers cheering them, and subsequent posting of Youtube videos of rockets, some under chute and sometimes not, raining down on whoever was upwind or downwind.

For HPR, it was Youtube videos of HPR drag races with various unseen anomalous recoveries in which potential harmful events were easily observed and the outcome not easily avoided other than by the luck of where people were standing or cars were parked.

Fireworks folks have to do math before a public display to show that the likelihood of duds hitting people is very small; we had no such requirement earlier since we had mostly been tracking individual objects in daylight and the feeling had been that observant people could get out of the way. Now there was hard evidence that even observant people were being put at risk by these kinds of events. So risk reduction was needed (and as always when something that is mostly not harmful but sometimes could be gets brought to the attention of a code committee) and the mitigation had to be principled.

There is ample human perception and performance and psychophysical evidence that humans can visually track one moving object at a time, that it takes time to switch tracks and acquire targets (sometimes called Observe, Orient, Decide, Act or OODA loop), and that the apparent speed of the target and cross-retina motion is related to the ease with which it is acquired and tracked.

There is also good empirical evidence (and confirming math) that any one point in a landing area is less likely to be impacted as the target area increases (it's related to the square of the distance to the center so doubling the distance increases safety by a factor of 4 if the size/number of "targets" is constant).

So, increasing distance:
--helps by reducing apparent motion
--helps by increasing available reaction time
--helps by increasing the proportion of area where an unintended landing would nevertheless be not harmful (by a lot, given that if other safety code provisions about overflying spectators, etc are followed, the parts coming down representing a danger to spectators are truly anomalous events--if the impact zone is in the crowd because the field is set up wrong, then the situation is even worse).

In lots of ways, I regret that the hobby is becoming as regulated as it is. One way to prevent that, as has often been cited in this discussion, is to self-regulate--help make sure that our enthusiasm is bounded sufficiently by safe practices so that when the inevitable YouTube video gets posted that scares some member of the general public, or someone heaven forfend gets hurt, we can always tell our insurers and our regulators that that activity is not part of what we do and therefore not in need of intervention.

Thanks Ted!

I'm late to the discussion as well, from my point, I'm more concerned with anomolous flight/recovery issues, if you have multiple rockets launched, your probability of a recovery problem in at least one of them is higher, that's just probability, trying to call a heads up when a structural failure/ballistic recovery happens and being able to find/see where the problem is with multiple things in the air is much harder, and thus less safe. It's hard enough to get people to pay attention to a single heads up warning at a launch, let alone with multiple things going on.

Frank