I am looking for ideas on how to encourage participation in the set up and the teardown of a rocket launch. Our local club has a lack of participation and a mass exodus at shut down time. How does your club encourage participation?
How busy is your launch schedule?
Maybe people that help set up and break down get first priority in getting their Rockets to the pads?
It is funny about travel time. My family and I have one of the longest drive, yet, we feel the biggest obligation to stay and clean up.
This launch was especially bad because we had a large number of expended igniters littering the ground. Is it really hard: If you place an igniter, take an igniter to the trash.
We also keep a 5 gallon bucket at each launch pad location. If it's there, people feel an obligation to use it, and it makes clean up sooooo much faster.
Funny you bring up the bucket. There was a bucket at each pad bank. The igniters were littered all around it. I guess you can’t fix stupid or lazy.
There are always the few that turn up late and leave early; or parents with children in tow that find it difficult to help out at every launch.
I am part of a club that took a deposit for events. The monies were then split among the cleanup crew who stuck around.
The more I think about this, the More I like it. I might pitch this to the leadership of both clubs.
A club is about cooperation. In any group, there's always an inner core, a group within a group, if you will. That core usually does most of the work. I'm not trying to break into that circle, just pay my social dues.
One of the inner core pulled out the lost and found...
I remember it being kind of funny that I realized just then - somebody else could have tripped over one of the 2 or 3 rockets I had already sent to the gods by that point. Of course! There had to be a lost and found.
Then I watched the core group divy up some pretty neat stuff. I assume that I could have spent less than an hour of the day that I spent cleaning up their equipment, sifting through launch cards to match these goodies up their owners.
From that day on, I have called it even with a clear conscience. I get to use their site and equipment for a nominal fee, and they get to keep any of my stuff they find.
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