I dont know if I want to take on the situation, but I get more of a feeling if you are not part of the group already or know someone in the group you are an outcast. I was venting a bit but I think I will need to find some other club that might be a few hours away to fly with.
I dont know enough to even do such a thing, nor do i know enough people that even likes this hobby.
I don't know who the officers are in the club and the website is outdated by a few years. Maybe I am missing details, but as far as I am aware from talking to other members they no longer have meetings, just once a month launch on a small field. Maybe I am expecting something completely different as to what a club should be.
Well, there's differences in clubs, that's for sure... some of its regional, some of it is just organizational or focus or outlook or how they want to do it, or whatever you want to call it.
Some clubs are very fastidious about having monthly business meetings, club activities like build days, workshops, get-togethers, barbeques, Christmas parties, Fourth of July parties, in addition to regular club launches conducted usually monthly or a couple times a month, depending on distances and size and amount of help available, and membership desires and preferences. Some have highly organized leadership and conduct their business strictly by Roberts Rules or Order, with clearly defined jobs and officers and organizational structure, some are far more relaxed in their organizational structure. MOST clubs struggle with adding members (at times anyway) and finding enough volunteers to get everything done. If the website is out of date by a few years, then probably whomever was doing it has either got life issues, moved, lost interest in the hobby, or otherwise isn't involved much anymore or at all... Usually finding volunteers is one of the biggest jobs-- folks willing to do setup and teardown and cleanup at the launches, carry or fix or store or set up launch equipment, do organizational tasks for the club, etc...
Basically there is no "single" pattern or method for a club. Some clubs are very big and have a lot of resources, and have a lot of talent and capabilities at their disposal, very knowledgeable or involved people, some don't. Some clubs, especially smaller clubs, don't have as much of a talent pool to draw from. Usually smaller clubs tend to be more "relaxed" in their organizational methodology and are usually looking more for volunteers, help, and new members. Of course, like I said, some small groups CAN and ARE very cliquish. Usually the "insiders" know everybody and are known by everybody, and are VERY 'established and happy' in their own ways of doing things, and see outsiders and newbies as a threat to their way of doing things. Sometimes there's some good reasons for this-- some folks and clubs have been burned in the past, and tend to 'draw in on themselves' around a core group. Of course, sometimes it's just a power-trip, with a small group wanting to keep things just as they are. Usually over time these sorts of groups just sort of fade away... if for no other reason than everybody gets old and dies and nobody is left to carry on (like most of the churches I went to as a kid-- the ones that ARE still around that I've visited, are usually down to a half dozen to a dozen EXTREMELY geriatric old timers, still stubbornly stuck to their ways-- no growth, no new membership, only the old holdouts and maybe some of their kin, and usually the only way anyone new gets added is by marriage or something to one of the grandkids or something who still lives in the area and grew up in that church. It's extremely sad, but that's one of the truths of group dynamics sometimes).
Anyway, you have to find a club you're comfortable with. Being treated like an outsider isn't very fun. Rocketry is supposed to be FUN... like Dr. Zooch's motto, "If Rocketry isn't fun, you're doing it wrong!" This might well not be the club for you. Course, that said, EVERYBODY is an outsider at SOME point... it may be a matter of getting to know you better and realizing that you're not in it to "take over" or "change things to suit you" and stuff like that. As I mentioned before, the Challenger 498 club was at death's door several times and revived... It had been started back in the mid-late 80's and really flourished during the Compaq computer days-- lots of nerds looking for an outlet in a technical hobby... then of course HP bought them out, shut down the Houston factories soon after, and the club dwindled to nearly nothing... It was kept alive and slowly rebuilt, and then at some point some rich guy joined who started throwing a lot of money around, offering free transport in his Suburban and hauling everybody's stuff a couple hours west of Houston to a large regional HPR launch field, buying a lot of stuff for the club and giving away a lot of freebies, stuff like that... Stuff that sounds very altruistic on the face of it, or at the very least, trying to "buy" friends, BUT, as the old saying goes, "there is no free lunch" (or as we rocketeers say, "There is no FREE LAUNCH!" LOL
) and soon the guy started trying to run everything, and when it didn't go his way, throwing temper-tantrums and getting in disputes and arguments with everybody who didn't go along with his way of thinking, not content to be simply outvoted-- no, if it didn't go his way, he started threatening lawsuits on the basis of "defamation" and "libel" and "slander" and all sorts of stupidity, and he had the money to do it, and everybody else just got sick of dealing with the A-hole and would just quit and go to another club. This continued until basically he ran EVERYBODY off but the NAR club advisor, and then once the guy had nobody to influence or lord over, he quit and walked away, leaving the club on life support with a single member, who paid to keep it chartered out of his own pocket for a few years til a few people started coming back and they built back up... then it all happened AGAIN with the ramrod Prez I mentioned in another post...
After the club imploded the last time, after laying for about a year, the former NAR Advisor's life settled down a bit and he asked if he revived the club or started a new one, if they could launch on our farms... I said sure, but offered a word of friendly advice-- part of the problem that really precipitated the implosion of the old club had been some peanut gallery sniper former Grand Pooh-Bah from 20 years before during the Compaq era, who came charging in out of nowhere and throwing his weight around and basically called the club VP, who constituted in himself about 50% of the club's volunteer manpower, a "rules Nazi" for doing the first thing the membership ordered him to do-- rewrite the bylaws... it was obvious that folks who don't even attend launches really have no business running the club as President or a high ranking officer, and he was rewriting the bylaws to require officers to attend at least TWO monthly launches per year (not an unreasonable idea IMHO) but this guy just flipped out... of course he didn't volunteer to do ANYTHING in the last 20 years that I ever saw since he was Pooh-Bah in the old days, and I NEVER saw him at a launch over about a four year span... but he achieved running off 50% of the club's actual volunteer manpower with some crappy comments...
I think that perhaps this experience is more common than we might realize, and that some club's response to it or defense against it is to 'pull in tighter' around the core group and keep newbies from ascending too high or too fast in the club until they become a "known quantity" to everyone else... which isn't a bad idea IMHO. Usually folks coming in on "power trips" or looking to take over and turn everything their way are usually pretty impatient to get on with it... and allowing them to move up or become too involved too quickly, without really knowing them, is inviting them to take over. And once they take over, they tend to dig in like a tick... And usually the club either has to work very hard and have a messy process to ouster them, or loses membership and implodes or quits and forms a new club.
That was the friendly advice I gave my buddy when considering whether to revive the old club or simply form a new one... "Form a new club, and JETTISON ALL THAT OLD BAGGAGE". Do things the way you want to, as the forming membership core, from day one. Establish bylaws like you want, set the schedule and the tempo and the VIBE of the club you want, build the club and get it going, recruit old members and make new ones, and if you start attracting the attention of the "old gang of usual suspects" looking to take over or snipe from the peanut gallery about "that's not how we did it 20 years ago when *I* was Grand Pooh-Bah" or something, it's quick and easy to say "Well, tough luck, cupcake-- that was then, IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CLUB THAT NO LONGER EXISTS, and THIS IS NOW... this is a different club, and this is how we're doing it NOW." You want to propose something different, fine-- put it to a vote, and if it's voted in, we do it. If it's voted down, live with it, or LEAVE. Ultimately that's what he decided to do, and they've been making slow progress ever since, with a few setbacks, but that's to be expected after all that's happened.
Here's some things I can think of you might consider... if you've been attending the launches, have you gotten to know anybody?? If this situation is anything like it sounds, it may well be a case of some VERY entrenched "old timers" not wanting ANYTHING to change, and thus maintaining a stranglehold on things... sometimes this is good, sometimes bad. If you talk to different folks and feel around a bit, you may well find that there's a fairly considerable number of folks who are "outcasts" and just flying there for lack of an alternative. If you all put your heads together, you could probably well find enough time, talent, and people (only takes 3 IIRC for the NAR Charter) to form a club of your own. You already said you have a line on a launching field... Plus, it sounds like you're interested in "big boy rockets" (HPR) and that's not everybody's cup of tea... if these "insiders" are mostly or strictly into LPR/MPR, losing their HPR field might be no big deal for them, so they're not working to secure a new field... in fact they may be looking to "get rid of" the "HPR crowd" by NOT having a HPR capable field... in which case, shooting down or dismissing your suggestions or offers of getting a HPR field isn't what they want to hear... would certainly explain why you're getting the cold shoulder... you could be seen as "just another of them HPR ya-hoos"... (hey, it's a possibility). We're not big enough a farm for HPR and our family (to whom I have to answer to) is not interested in hosting HPR. Of course the club is free to find a HPR capable field if they so choose, or go to another HPR launching field for joint launches.
Anyway, there might be enough of yall to get together and form your own club-- usually finding a launching field is THE hardest part of the entire process-- Challenger was facing the slow loss of the public park it was launching from, due to the land increasingly being taken over by soccer fields and ponds. I became a bar and attended a launch or two, and saw the pitiful corner of the park they were forced into, and offered my farm for launches right away... after a scouting trip, the NAR advisor announced the new field... just in time as it turned out, because the last corner of the park got turned into ponds and soccer fields the next summer.
At any rate, having a line on a new field (and talking to the owner and getting permission confirmed) would give you at least 50% of the work of forming a new club done. I bet if you ask around, you'll find some other HPR folks (and probably even some folks discontent with the 'status quo' in the club as it exists) who'd be willing to form a new club with you and give it a shot. There's nothing saying you can't be in more than one club, either. Some of the Old Rocketeers #724 (the new club formed after the Challenger) hold dual membership in Challenger and NASA/Houston Rocket Club (NHRC) which is the other main Houston area club, in addition to Tripoli Houston which is all HPR IIRC.
Like I said, you only need three NAR members to start a section. Contact the NAR webpage or NAR HQ for more details. You don't have to start with everything-- folks can use their own launch gear, pads, controllers, whatever with a "misfire alley" system starting out... (HPR is usually a little more organized with more centralized and formalized control in accordance with the HPR safety code and practices, but you don't have to have an official "club launcher" starting out... just a few guys with their own equipment willing to volunteer it for launches. Start small and build from there. You don't have to have a website or dues or bylaws or whatever to start... of course if you want to grow, well, those things start to come in handy-- the more people, the more disagreement about how things should be run and what is/isn't allowed, who's in charge, etc... That's when bylaws and officers and stuff become more important, and when small dues might be in order, if the need exists for dedicated club launch equipment, controllers, etc. By that time, you should have enough interested manpower to spread the load and expenses and collect enough dues to get things done and bought...
Every club starts SOMEWHERE... most of the "old time" long-standing clubs that have been existence for decades, back to the NAR's beginnings, are mostly on the west and east coasts, with a smattering of older clubs dotting the heartland of the country... as rocketry and the space program's fortunes and popularity has waxed and waned, a lot of clubs have come and gone in most of the country. California, with it's strict overregulation of rocketry (and everything else IMHO) basically REQUIRES a club be formed with a substantial membership to deal with all the regulatory burdens and hassles in order to even have launches; personal flying in California on one's own outside a club is, from what I understand, almost impossible, ESPECIALLY for HPR. Most of the rest of the country is FAR more relaxed, but it varies by state and location...
Best of luck to you! OL JR
