NARCON 2007: March 9-11, Rochester, MN

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41 degrees!??!!??!

toasty! :D

We've (NH) been warm lately with T-shirt temps in the 30's but tomorrow is supposed to be frigid with temps in the teens for a high and in the low single digits over night... Haven't seen 40 since January I think :)
 
A few updates:

Online registration & ordering has now ended. People may still register for NARCON at the door.

A very limited number of "extra" t-shirts were printed. They will be available for purchase at the NARCON registration/information table.

The final version of the schedule can be downloaded here:
https://www.narcon2007.org/event_info/schedule.htm

By request, some hotel parking info has been added to the web site:
https://www.narcon2007.org/faqs.htm#Parking

Due to a last minute conflict, Launch Magazine is unable to attend NARCON.
However, Aerotech has just informed us that they will be attending NARCON.

Two days away... Wow!

Alan
 
:( Dang knee!

Nevertheless, I hope everyone has a great time! I'll catch up with everyone at NSL.
 
300 plus miles behind us, Kathy has crashed and I'm building rockets... ...go figure LOL

We'll make better time from here on out. No more mountains :)
 
Originally posted by Juaru
You should see the "Miracle Whip" clinic! :D :D :D :D

Sorry about that...


John (not Jon) Arthur

www.JonRocket.com
Click to expand...

ARGH! I hate the Miracle Whip Clinic! All fake equipment, and it smells funny...

Gimme the real thing, any day...

:p
(my bad)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled thread...
 
I'm going to make reservations at Victoria's Italian restaurant for 5:40 on Friday night. So far I only have 5 people signed up:
* Snuggles (Mark T)
* Jim Flis
* Kathy Flis
* Bob Cox
* Tater Schuld

I also have 2 maybes:
* Chan Stevens
* NARPrez (Probably not, due to board meeting conflict).

Anybody else care to join us?
 
Check out this morning news show video on KAAL TV. The TV station is nearest the launch site (not the convention center).

KAAL TV Coverage of NARCON

My interest lies as that's my onboard video taken last July at the Maple Island Missile Range of TSM.

Great advertising for the event.
 
First day done, and was worth the drive down.

If anyone is in the area, no reason not to come down. Lots to do and see and the launch field is in the area.
 
Originally posted by BobCox
I'm going to make reservations at Victoria's Italian restaurant for 5:40 on Friday night. So far I only have 5 people signed up:
* Snuggles (Mark T)
* Jim Flis
* Kathy Flis
* Bob Cox
* Tater Schuld

I also have 2 maybes:
* Chan Stevens
* NARPrez (Probably not, due to board meeting conflict).

Anybody else care to join us?
Click to expand...

Ok, so we're at NARCON, got all set up and I'm looking for Bob Cox... Mind you I'm looking for a short, rather odd looking monkey man, and keeping my eyes about knee level as I scan the room...

Well, I saw his knees first... LOL

A good start to the convention. Now for a much needed sleep!

jim
 
This is my first NARCON and I'm having a blast. Some highlights for me:

* Dinner: I received responses from 8 people, so I made reservations for 12, assuming we'd get a few extras. We ended up with 21 people and accidentally took over the tables for another party. In one room we had the top brass from Fliskits, Apogee, Sunward, Semroc, Aerotech, LOC/Precision, and Red River. I joked that if a bomb had gone off in that room, the hobby would never recover.

* I was the first customer at the FlisKits booth, and I grabbed the first Borealis ever sold.

* At the end of the evening during the door prize drawings, the first two prize winners were sitting side-by-side. While the second winner was collecting his prize, Carl from Semroc scurried up and sat down in the next seat, hoping to get lucky. It turned out that everybody in that row won a prize, including me.

* The local TV station sent a camera crew to the vendor room. We got about 90 seconds of coverage on the 6:00 news, and they gave us a plug for the Sport Launch on Saturday. I even got my mug on TV for about 5 seconds. Good thing I got a haircut yesterday.
 
Originally posted by BobCox
snip... Good thing I got a haircut yesterday.
Click to expand...

I'm betting it's going to take more than that.
A lot more.

:eek:
 
Originally posted by 11Bravo
I'm betting it's going to take more than that.
A lot more.

:eek:
Click to expand...

HEHE. I can see it now "In other news, a local zoo monkey exscapes and manages to find his way to a rocket meeting" ;)

:p j/k

Wish I was there! :(

Ben
 
Just got back to Illinois after about a 5-1/2 hr drive- just long enough :)

The MASA folks did a great job. There's an extensive underground subway network in Rochester and everything is connected. We parked in a parking garage about a block away and it was free. Being from a Chicago suburb we couldn't believe there was any free parking in any major city. We stayed at an offsite hotel that was only about 15 mins. away, and it was a breeze to drive downtown. Rochester is a small city and it's pretty much a ghost town on the weekends.

There were LOTS of door prizes- well over 100 of them. The vendors (attending and non-attending) were very generous. Someone won a gift certificate to one of Sheri's rockets that was worth $500! A youth attendee won the youth grand prize that was a box of rockets and supplies worth about $150. Lots of kits and gift certificates. As always, Estes never shows up and certainly could do a better job supporting the folks who have bought millions of their engines.

I got lucky on the last day and won a Saturn 1B from the Semroc folks- it was right as we were leaving and Bruce suggested we stick around for the last auction. The McLawhorns are such super nice people.

Good presentations. I mostly went for the FAI talk given by Trip Barber. There's not much written information available on international competitions and Trip put together a very informative talk with a lot of details on buidling the lightweight fiberglass-tubed rockets.

Jim Flis has a nice session on putting together rocket kits. He talked about his experiences on learning how to do things properly, and how difficult it can be to develop instructions for a particular buying audience for his kits.

There was a keynote speaker (can't remember his name) who had worked with NASA on the shuttle project. It was very interesting to hear his various astronaut stories. The other keynote speaker was a guy who worked on the X-15 project. Though his discussion of the design of the wheel well part of the craft got a little long winded!

NARCON is so valuable because it's one of the few places where you can attend seminars to learn about the technical aspects of rocketry. It certainly differs from attending launches which are valuable in themselves.

Enough blabbering from me- I'm sure others will chime in....
 
Kudos to the folks from MASA for hosting NARCON this year!

Since it was just a few hours from home here in Milwaukee, I took the family for an overnight at the next-door-to-the-Kahler-hotel, the Rochester Marriott. While they went swimming and enjoyed themselves, I visited the vendors and stocked up on kits for my spring and summer building.

As always, it was an absolute pleasure to chat with Carl & his clan from Semroc (and that software for controlling his CNC nose cone maker is just amazing...no wonder Semroc makes such great stuff with cool gadgets like that in the toolbox!).

I'm always in awe when listening to Jim Flis discuss his new kits. What a fertile mind! And it was great to meet Kathy Flis for the first time. For those of you who haven't seen a FlisKits Borealis yet...it's a beauty! And, Jim, in case you read this...was the consensus on the interlocking tubes on the next kit "horizontal" or "vertical"? I'm still rooting for "horizontal", myself. :D

Speaking of new kits a-comin'...keep an eye on Sirius Rocketry's website. There's a new kit coming from them that's awesome. Let's just say that David has been spending some serious time with a vacuforming machine, and the results are waaay cool. Now, if I can just save up enough $$$ to buy one of his Saturns... ;)

This NARCON was the first time I had a chance to meet the team from Hawks Hobby, and my hope is that I can do justice to the Super Trident and Super Mars Snooper I picked up from them. The demo versions that were in their booth were outstanding rockets!

It was also great to see and chat with the other vendors...Sunward, Apogee, Microclassics, BMS...in short, if you're ever in the vicinity of a NARCON, don't hesitate to make the trip. The vendors alone are worth the trip!
 
I am still have way home as it is a long trip. So brewing coffee and catching up on emails in the motel room.

To say MASA did a great job was an understatement. They did a fantastic job! Everything was organized and ready to go.

I attended both guest speakers. The presentations were interesting with video and pictures that showed history as it occurred.

Meeting people you only talk to on the phone or only know online with a byline was a treat.

Hotel accommodations were elegant for a low price. Food at the 2 restaurants I went to were also good.

There were also other seminars worth attending. This was my first NARCON, but not the last.
 
It was a busy NARCON and, as always, all too short. It seems like we just emptied the truck, set everything up and it was time to take it all down again!

Mucho kudo's to MASA and all the folks involved. This was a very well run NARCON and everyone seemed to have a great time.

Always a pleasure to meet up with the wonderfull vendors and rocketeers that make up this hobby. I have been involved in many hobbies over the years and I maintain that *rocketeers* are the most special group of fine folks :)

I had a small talk this morning on the details of putting together a kit that is expected to be built by someone other than me. It was well attended with about 12 folks there. I think it went very well. I tend to do different sorts of talks. You will rarely see me up there lecturing for an hour. Rather I make it very informal and interactive. I hope the folks enjoy that :)

Sales were good. I was surprised at how well the micromaxx models did. It was our best sales event to date for mmx. A good sign.

Well, with 400 miles behind us, we're beat. More later!
jim
 
WoW! Great photos! And a really fun launch. It looks cold but it wasn't - very nice.

And for those of you not familiar - the guy sitting on the bucket eating wild rice soup in the 6th photo is none other than TRF's 11Bravo (and, yes, that's his usual position - sitting and eating),
 
Just made the final update to the list of door prizes that we gave away at NARCON - 182 of them - including the two "grand prizes"!!!

A huge, huge, huge thanks to all the companies that generously donated their products for the door prize drawings!

Aerospace Specialty Products
Aerotech
ARA Press
Balsa Machining Service
Chutes by Boe
Dr Zooch
Excelsior Rocketry
FlisKits
Hawks Hobby
Hub Hobby Center
jonrocket.com
Launch Magazine
LOC/Precision
Madcow Rocketry
MicroClassics
NARTS
PDrocketry
Qmodeling
Quest
Red River Rocketry
Semroc
Sirius Rocketry
Starlight Model Rockets
Sunward Aerospace

On behalf of the NARCON staff and all the attendees who went home with free goodies, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Alan
 
Accidentally omitted somebody from that long list:

Ed Hartle of Hartle Engineering sent us a huge quantity of chute skinz and streamers. So many, in fact, that instead of drawing them as door prizes, we put one in each registration packet.

Thanks Ed!

Alan
 
Originally posted by BHP
WoW! Great photos! And a really fun launch. It looks cold but it wasn't - very nice.

And for those of you not familiar - the guy sitting on the bucket eating wild rice soup in the 6th photo is none other than TRF's 11Bravo (and, yes, that's his usual position - sitting and eating),
Click to expand...

Man. He got a picture of me eating soup.
He took a picture of me helping the young lad with his dog barf.
Gonna have to have a talk with him.
Good pics though.
 
Originally posted by 11Bravo
Man. He got a picture of me eating soup.
He took a picture of me helping the young lad with his dog barf.
Gonna have to have a talk with him.
Good pics though.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I wonder why he got one of you sitting and eating? Perhaps you spent most your time doing that? :D

Seriously, though, 11B is a pretty good guy that'd help old ladies across the street, young men with dog barf and even assist in pulling an errant rocketeer's car from a snow-filled ditch.
 

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