crazy launch experience

[gdjsky01]

Yeah, a heaven with no jobs. I think that for many people, the lack of the amenities that I mentioned would render this place a living Hell.

Upstate NY is very different from the downstate NYC metro area. Two different worlds. It's hard to convey the contrast unless you've been here. And Northern NY is even more different. REALLY different.

Believe it or not, it's NOT hard to imagine. I spent Summers in New York City and used to go to JFK and LaGuardia Airport by myself, on the subway and bus. I grew up an hour from the Finger Lakes, Watkins Glen, Dansville, and Letchwork State Park. I spent other Summers in Fleischmanns in the Catskills, and yet others on Lake George or Sacandaga Lake. I know (or knew) that New York is many states a long time ago. All long suffering under the government elected by NYC and Long Island.

Texas is two or three states in one though I don't know it well.

California, that hellish place you swear is the anti-anti universe (since I don't believe in hell and such), is more than one state. Look at a map. North of Redding you'd swear you were on a different planet. Its all rural where your nearest neighbor is a mile or two down the road. The only people with fences or lights on outside are 'City Folk' who wanted to buy their way into ranching. There is a state the size of almost Iowa up there that also watches their vote count for nothing. And there are the desert rats in the San Diego and Mojave deserts. Also a completely different world from L.A., San Fran, and San Diego. The central valley, probably bigger than Vermont? Its all farming.

Los Angeles covers a small state in size, wall to wall Starbucks, cars, more cars, and even more cars, laws, people, concrete, and a few scary people. It's a place you plan your life around traffic. Sick! :rant::rant:

However(!!) there is also amazing live theater, museums, amazing foods and cuisine from every corner of the planet, and wine from every corner of the planet. I am a 10 minute walk to the ocean. If I want, on December 30th while you are up to your neck in snow, I can ski in the morning, and by afternoon I can be swimming in the ocean. If there is a launch this weekend there is almost NO CHANCE (almost) it'll be rained out. Heck the San Diego Tripoli folks don't hold launches in the Summer cause its too hot! And for 7 months of the year, I'd bet a paycheck that ANYTHING you want to do outside on any day of the week, you'll not have the weather to blame if you don't. Anything (legal that is). I can eat OUTSIDE almost any night and not be swatting flies and the Florida State Bird all night long.

There is no one heaven on Earth. And if there was, everyone would move there and it would be gone.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Yeah, a heaven with no jobs. I think that for many people, the lack of the amenities that I mentioned would render this place a living Hell. :

Can't have everything...

Upstate NY is very different from the downstate NYC metro area. Two different worlds. It's hard to convey the contrast unless you've been here. And Northern NY is even more different. REALLY different.

I used to have a girlfriend in northern Jersey... spent several weeks to a month or so at a time up there with her and her family... hehehehe... I was about as "popular" as Bigfoot up there... everybody wanted to hear me talk so they could giggle... LOL Course everybody up there sounded like Archie and Edith Bunker to me... :lol: We went up into New York state to visit her family up there, as well as to southern Jersey... different world, that's for sure!!! Especially when you're "imported from Texas"... LOL I actually found "rural" New Yorkers quite friendly, even the Jersey folks were very nice so long as you weren't in a city. Course that's pretty much true everywhere now that I think about it... My GF wanted to take me into NYC-- I said "no thanks"-- I HATE CITIES!!! Haven't lost anything there and didn't care to take my chances. Course I coulda seen the twin towers about a year before 9/11... and did see the towers from the plane when we flew out of Newark to Disney World... Got a funny feeling looking at those towers... sorta "take a good long look-- they won't be there in a few years" raise the hair on the back of your neck sorta feelings...

Kinda regret not seeing the Oriskany, but oh well... not worth the trouble to go into NYC just for that...

I've lived in the "sticks" all my life, and I don't miss a thing... other than my peace and quiet now that all the city idiots are moving in. It's kinda nice to be able to go see/do whatever you want in Houston in about 35 minutes or so drive, though. But I'd trade it for a little quieter, more secluded area.

What floors me is, these city slickers move out here to 'enjoy the country life" and "get away from the exhorbitant taxes and big gov't" in the cities. Then, what's the first thing they complain about-- no "services"-- no cops on patrol-- call the sheriff's office and in maybe an hour you'll see one drive by, if he can find you at all... fire dept in town, no garbage pickup, etc, etc, etc. SO, they "lobby" to get a bunch of stuff set up to increase or expand services. Once they get their services, the taxes INEVITABLY go up to pay for them... then they're PO'd about it and look to move AGAIN to somewhere "more rural" to repeat the cycle yet again...

People suck... :kill:

Later! OL JR

 

[MarkII]

I don't get Fred's "Bigfoot" reference.

I wasn't trying to gloat. I wasn't born here; I'm a transplant from the Motor City, by way of a whole bunch of other places in and around the Great Lakes. (I've been around.) But I have been living here in the bush for so long (27 years) that I have lost touch with what life is like back in the world. When I moved here, cell phones didn't exist. The internet was still in gestation and no one had heard of it yet. At work, the secretaries typed out my assessments and made copies using carbon paper. An IBM Selectric was high-end, high tech office equipment. To find our way in the backcountry, we used ancient tools, especially a map and compass. No one drove SUVs, because they hadn't been developed yet. The only off-road vehicles you ever saw at the time were actually mostly driven off road. (Imagine that!)

Only recently, in the past year, I have discovered mobile communication culture, and I am still learning about it. No one that I know here has ever had a smartphone. We do hear about things like that, but they always happen elsewhere, mostly far away.

The reason that I mention all of this is because I have been reading with surprise and incomprehension the recent threads that discussed the hassles that people are having in getting access to fields to use for rocket launching. I had no idea how complicated urban and suburban life had become in the decades since I lived in those settings. And how contentious. When I launched rockets previously, it was back in the mid and late 1960s, and I lived in a still growing development at the edge of a medium-sized Midwestern city. There were still numerous large open and undeveloped fields around my neighborhood, even though I lived within the city. My friend and I would just go over to the field nearest his house and launch our rockets, completely undisturbed, and basically unnoticed, by anyone. Oh, there were houses adjoining the field in that suburban-like neighborhood, and we must have been clearly visible from them, but no one, no one, ever even came by to ask us what we were doing.

I didn't resume launching rockets again until long after I had decamped to the jungle up here. Here the situation has been essentially just like it was when I was launching rockets as a kid. Far fewer open fields, though, because this is mostly thick forest. I never thought anything of it, never thought that things might be different elsewhere, back in civilization. The accounts of conflicts with soccer players, investigations by the local police, having to pay for use of the launch field, etc., sounded like freak, isolated incidents. I mean, surely those types of things were very rare, weren't they? When I read a post from someone who said that there wasn't anyplace on all of Long Island where he could launch a small model rocket, I couldn't believe it. This kind of stuff just stuns me; it is completely outside of my experience. I have trouble getting my head around it. I cannot fathom anymore what it is like to live back in the First World.

When did I become such a bumpkin?

 

[SCE to AUX]

Kinda regret not seeing the Oriskany, but oh well... not worth the trouble to go into NYC just for that...

I think you meant the Intrepid. The Oriskany was sunk as an artificial reef off of Florida several years back. She was NAMED after a town in upstate NY, though...

 

[UrbanKnight]

There is even a science teacher, right here on TRF trying to work with the LAUSD and the fire department to hold a launch in the school yard for his class. I am not sure if he's pulled it off. But he was trying.

If you're talking about me (I'm actually a music teacher teaching an extra curricular enrichment class), I faxed all the requested information to my local LAFD Fire Prevention Unit on Tuesday and she is reviewing the information. I'm not too concerned since a colleague of mine (also a music teacher) has already done this as an after school club and obtained the permits for launch on a similar field.

I wouldn't bother doing this just for launching myself, though. It would be nice if SCRA could expand to other locations to make the drive shorter for others, and to increase the available launch dates by staggering them with the Irwindale launches. Hansen Dam in Sunland comes to mind.

Also, I noticed that the website for El Mirage Dry Lake lists model rocketry as one of the activities it is used for. Does anybody know if you need to get a permit still, or if it is implied by the website? That's where my grandfather used to take me to shoot off rockets when I was an adolescent, but I never thought to ask him about permits and stuff.

 

[UrbanKnight]

California, that hellish place you swear is the anti-anti universe (since I don't believe in hell and such), is more than one state. Look at a map. North of Redding you'd swear you were on a different planet. Its all rural where your nearest neighbor is a mile or two down the road. The only people with fences or lights on outside are 'City Folk' who wanted to buy their way into ranching. There is a state the size of almost Iowa up there that also watches their vote count for nothing.

Ahh, the State of Jefferson

 

[shreadvector]

If you're talking about me (I'm actually a music teacher teaching an extra curricular enrichment class), I faxed all the requested information to my local LAFD Fire Prevention Unit on Tuesday and she is reviewing the information. I'm not too concerned since a colleague of mine (also a music teacher) has already done this as an after school club and obtained the permits for launch on a similar field.

I wouldn't bother doing this just for launching myself, though. It would be nice if SCRA could expand to other locations to make the drive shorter for others, and to increase the available launch dates by staggering them with the Irwindale launches. Hansen Dam in Sunland comes to mind.

Also, I noticed that the website for El Mirage Dry Lake lists model rocketry as one of the activities it is used for. Does anybody know if you need to get a permit still, or if it is implied by the website? That's where my grandfather used to take me to shoot off rockets when I was an adolescent, but I never thought to ask him about permits and stuff.

Hansen is directly in the path of traffic to and from Burbank Airport. Also, Rick D from ROC looked at the site many years ago. Sepulveda Basin Rec is also off limits (Van Nuys Airport).

El mirage is indeed used by many. I have never been there, but other teachers have told me that you are supposed to check in with a ranger, so see what you can find out. The verbal check-in with the ranger is the required permission. They represent both the property owner and the fire authority (from what I've been told - feel free to verify).

Time to sign off for the day. Gotta drive home and pack the car for the launch tomorrow.

 

[UrbanKnight]

Hansen is directly in the path of traffic to and from Burbank Airport. Also, Rick D from ROC looked at the site many years ago. Sepulveda Basin Rec is also off limits (Van Nuys Airport).

El mirage is indeed used by many. I have never been there, but other teachers have told me that you are supposed to check in with a ranger, so see what you can find out. The verbal check-in with the ranger is the required permission. They represent both the property owner and the fire authority (from what I've been told - feel free to verify).

Time to sign off for the day. Gotta drive home and pack the car for the launch tomorrow.

I hadn't realized it was that close to the Burbank flight path. Van Nuys was obvious to me as I frequently ride my bike around that area and am always under airplanes there.

I shot an email off to BLM, so hopefully they will reiterate what you just said about El Mirage.

Have fun tomorrow. Since I'll be building 3 or 4 more rockets while teaching this class, I plan to bring the collection out to more of the SCRA launches early next year.