South Dakota High Power is BACK! SDRJ has a field and waiver!

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HHaase

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I'll be posting more news as it filters through, but thanks to the tireless work of a club member, the South Dakota Rocket Jockeys finally have an actual field available. We had been essentially field-less and dormant for a few years but this year looks to be when we finally get back in the air.

Our waiver also came through today with an 8,000ft AGL limit on it. This exceeds my best hopes and we are quite pumped to get back in the air. Our field is a bit west of Brookings, SD.

It looks like 1st Sunday of the month will be our flying days from June through November, and once we gather up our core group and establish how much flying we can support, I'll let you all know and send out an official invite to the launches. We are NAR affiliated, but currently not Tripoli.

I'll also finish up a couple un-finished build threads too, because it's getting warm out there, and the itch needs to get scratched.
 
Hi HHaase, I belong to the MN Tripoli, both south and North, Glad th hear you have found a field. Our office is in Gary, SD, for work. I would look forward to fflying with you. Please keep us posted. Thanks, Dave.
 
Awesome news! Brookings is about 2 hours from me. That would be a closer launch to me than the Minnesota sites I have available. Please keep me posted of your progress.
 
Glad to hear the interest guys! I know we are committed to helping a cube-sat team from SDSU this year, and we need to discuss how much flying we can support with our current equipment.

Assuming we can handle everybody, I'll be more than glad to put out the invite. Just keep in mind we're really just getting started and running on a bare-bones setup for sure. So we'll be open to any suggestions and helpful critiques we hear.

-Hans
 
Congrats on the field when I was in the Rapid City area we had BLM land to use for the BHARC. Black Hills Amateur Rocketry Club. Sorry to leave there for some things and had to for others. Good flying at your field and soft landings for all.
 
Sounds like starting in June we'll be having launches the first Sunday of the month, as the cube-sat program should be finished up by then. And starting in July it also looks like we'll have a motor vendor on-site as well.

If any of you folks would like to join us, we'll be very happy to have you along for the ride.

-Hans
 
Sorry I haven't been around. Been a bit of a hectic time, as I'm sure everybody is aware of.

Anyway, a couple more major updates on this, with bad news, good news, and great news.

The bad news is the FAA rescinded our waiver due to concerns with General Aviation at the Brookings airport. Turns out there's no commercial flights but a high number of GA flights through the area. That was a bit of a gut punch.

Good News! A new set of potential sites was located a bit further out, and the FAA was very cooperative with us in establishing the best options for us to move forward. A new site was selected and a new waiver has now been issued. We've got a scouting trip coming up in a couple weeks to really plan things out for flying there.

The Great News? The new site gets us a bit more altitude with a 9,000' AGL waiver, as opposed to the 8,000' AGL at the previous location.

More updates as things proceeed.
 
SD and only 9k waiver that surprises me. But than again it's a very good start. Good luck guys. Where in SD is the site?
 
It's about 10 miles West of Brookings, give or take. We're going to have our first club-only launch on the 7th of June to get ourselves acclimated to flying there, and make sure our equipment is able to support what we want to do. Once we're comfortable with all that we'll be putting out open invites.

Between Brookings and Huron airports, there's a surprising amount of general aviation in the area, so the 9k limit doesn't really surprise me. We're actually quite happy with that for the flying we normally do anyway.
 
Happy to say I was able to attend the first club launch at the new field today. I had a blast. It was a great way to spend my birthday.
 
That’s great news. I will soon fly with the local club whose site is about an hour south of me. Not bad, but I’ve been looking for a closer site. I’ve checked local parks and school athletic fields without luck. Found a great field 10 minutes away (RC airplanes and drones) but rockets not allowed by the owner (I think is a municipal dump). Would you share the process by which you secured both a site and a waiver? tia
 
Louis;

For us, we have the advantage of being surrounded by massive amounts of farm land. That, and one of our members is very involved with a lot of the local farms and agriculture. He used to spend a lot of time driving around out in farm country and really pushed this year to find a prime site and spent a lot of time building up rapport with the farmers. So a lot of finding a field for us was legwork and building relationships.

For a waiver, the NAR has a good instructional page. A bit more involved of course since it's governmental paperwork. Though if you're not flying high-power, it's likely not even needed. P.J. Pilgrim with the FAA is very pleasant to work with and wants to get people flying safe and easy.
https://www.nar.org/high-power-rocketry-info/filing-for-faa-launch-authorization.

-Hans
 
On a good note, as mentioned above, we had our first successful day at the new SDRJ home field. The Peterson family were amazing hosts, and are happy to have us back for future launches.

So, I have the honor of saying that our scheduled launches will be open events for all flyers, including high-power with appropriate certifications. Our next scheduled launch is Sunday, August 2nd, 2020. Exact time and locations to follow.

-Hans
 
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