Missouri S&T Level 1 Workshop 2017

[MST_RDT]

Another year has begun at Missouri S&T, and with that comes new students for our Level 1 workshop. Each year we hold this workshop to introduce students to the wonderful world of High Power Rocketry. Many are Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering majors but we have members from a wide variety of engineering and science majors represented each year.

The culmination of our efforts each year is Midwest Power. We have made the pilgrimage for the last five years and participation has increased each year. Last year we had 25 successful flights and we are hoping to get even more people into the workshop this year. Since rolling this workshop out we have certified over 100 Level 1 rocketeers, many of whom have continued on to advanced levels!



This year we are continuing our collaboration with Tim at Wildman Rocketry and adding a donation from John at Rocket Poxy. We couldn’t do any of this without the friendly people at QCRS that welcome us back each year to have these flights and our test flight for IREC earlier this summer. There are many people who also freely give their time throughout the year and at launches, we learn a lot from these “old guys” and appreciate them a lot! We are so grateful for this help in making the workshop affordable and fun for the newbies to the sport.

We will be updating this thread periodically throughout the semester until MWP when we will fly a load of rockets and try not to freeze in our tents!

 

[rfjustin]

We couldn’t do any of this without the friendly people at QCRS that welcome us back each year to have these flights and our test flight for IREC earlier this summer. There are many people who also freely give their time throughout the year and at launches, we learn a lot from these “old guys” and appreciate them a lot! We are so grateful for this help in making the workshop affordable and fun for the newbies to the sport. We will be updating this thread periodically throughout the semester until MWP when we will fly a load of rockets and try not to freeze in our tents!

We (QCRS) are please you all have had a great time in past years, and we are looking forward to helping MST with more L1 cert attempts this year!

Similarly to other large regional/national launches, we have to make sure we maintain an appropriate pace of range operations and make sure all fliers are well taken care of. We are asking MST to assist the launch organizers (myself included) by throttling back the number of L1 cert flights going to the pads at the same time. What I mean here is, lets not have 25 new L1 cert folks all heading to the pads at the same. Having 3-5 (max) L1 cert flights heading to the pads at one given time is more manageable than 25 at a time. I appreciate your understanding here and we look forward to helping you all with additional L1 certs later in the year.

 

[GRIFFIN]

Justin hit it on the head here. Bottom line, we welcome you and your group and are here to help you all get your L1's. However, there will definitely be a different "system" in place this year and I will work with you to make sure you all have a chance to cert while also keeping the fluidity of the flight line moving, and the wait down to a minimum.

You all know how to find me and I look forward seeing you all there!

P.S. we will also have a separate RSO for the group. Again, see me when you get there! 😉

 

[MST_RDT]

Let me start by saying thanks for replying Justin and Jason. As you both pointed out there was an issue last year with too many of the MST L1 flyers going to the RSO and launch line at the same time clogging up the works. After MWP we met with the QCRS board to acknowledge that we had missed the mark on that. During that meeting we informed the BOD that we had reworked our processes to eliminate any future recurrence.


In the spirit of that agreement we have planned for senior members of our team (L2 and above) to RSO each rocket prior to allowing the flyer to approach the RSO. We also plan to meter the flyers; no more than 5 at a time not less than fifteen minutes apart.


Given that this is the first time many of our team members have launched from a 1010 rail, we will have additional pad managers attending our team to streamline the loading process as well.


Thanks again for reminding teams to exercise “pad courtesies.” We look forward to seeing everyone in November.

 

[SethRocks]

Yes we really appreciate your help!

 

[GRIFFIN]

We look forward to it as well. We have 10 new pads and a bunch more brand new rails. This will be a great MWP, and I wish you all good luck with the cert flights.

See you all in a few short weeks!

 

[MST_RDT]

Update!

We have 47 people participating in our L1 workshop this semester! That's 13 more then the last run. These coming weeks, while awaiting materials, we will be reviewing TRA safety code with the new guys as well as teaching them how to design a scratch-build rocket in RockSim. Next post will show the design progress.

 

[Jarhead]

Impressive number! With all of the new rocketeers you guys have introduced I am confident there will be plenty of young legs retrieving rockets long after my old legs have given up.
I look forward to working with you all again this year.

 

[djs]

Missouri S+T folks... have you thought about staggering the cert flights between the 3 days of the launch? I.e 10-15 per day, rather than trying to get people in in one day. It might make it a little less stressful on you guys.

 

[GRIFFIN]

Glen,

This is under control. We all have a plan. No worries!!


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[Jarhead]

Glen,

This is under control. We all have a plan. No worries!!


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum

+1 Jason.
We will be in touch with updates as we get closer to MWP.
Thanks Again to QCRS for everything they do for our up and coming rocket geeks!