Actually, Mike, I don't think you will have to recertify. NAR and TRA have agreements where they honor each other's certs. So, all you have to do is maybe fax them a copy of your TRA card showing L2 cert, and you will be NAR L2 cert as well. Not to say that it wouldn't be fun to redo them, just that it's probably not necessary.

Well if you will be working the next launch, I guess I will volunteer right now to tow both ways.

I was up past midnight trying to get my rockets ready for this launch. Still not ready, so I got up bright and early to do silly things like mount the altimeter.

Watching the winds around the Atlas site all evening, I soon realized that my rockets could not safely fly in those conditions. Hated to "pull the plug" but my rockets had to be grounded.

Shame, since this was going to be my Level 1 certification flight!

I rather expected club members to be at the Atlas site, so I was just about to depart my home. Besides, I wanted to purchase some items from Joe that I had ordered and would need for my next attempt.

Called Bear right before I departed to see if anyone was at the Atlas site and soon learned that it had been canceled. Having watched the wind data from stations around the location, the command decision was fully justified.

Darn, I had my video camera all ready and was expecting some rather spectacular flights that could be posted on YouTube.

After seeing my rocket ready this morning, my wife asked if I had a radio transmitter in it. Even she realized that we may never see it again without the ability to locate it and that would be something required for high altitude flights.

Long story, but I am now scheduled to take my Technician Class License written test next Saturday. Purchased a training guide (Kindle) for the written test and have already read 1/3 of the book.

Most of the radio and electronic stuff I have not studied in over 30 years, but I have been laughing tonight, since I still remember it. Never got my Ham license before because of the Morse code requirement and that became some form of "mental block" that I could never get past. Now that Morse code is no longer required, this test will be easy.

I also ordered a "Telemetrum Starter Kit", so if you can give me a little something "extra" as a club member, it would be most appreciated.

I purchased a subscription to www.hamtestonline.com You can change your training around to fit your needs, but it gave me every test question there was, let me study the questions and the back ground reasoning for doing so, learned a heck of a lot and aced my ham exam. Signed up for the subscription again and am going to take the next two exams soon, I hope. That is how I did it. I also purchased a telemetrun starter kit last year before the mini came out. I also purchased a Yaesu VX-7Rhand held new for almost half price on ebay and I went to Cheyenne and purchased an Arrow 2-meter antenna along with a clamp so I can clamp my antenna to the top of a painters pole and get it 12' up in the air. I also had the folls at Arrow make me a custom antenna cable so that it would plug into my radio and plug in to the antenna. It all works great. Then I got an adapter for my radio fromthe hams shack in Denver so I can plug a set of headphones with an 1/8" jack into the radio and I sometimes go out and do radio direction finding for practice.

I can fully blame my choice of GPS tracking all upon Adrian!

BEAR, you never told me that you already had a Telemetrum that I could test drive. Oh well...

As for the Ham written test:

This is how I learned all about electronics and to build my first Altair 8800 micro-computer in 1975. Ham radio operators have always been on the "bleeding edge" of amateur technology.

After 37 years, I may finally obtain my Ham radio license!

....

If you can afford the cost and space of GPS, though, it's worth it. I have several RDF beacons that are still lost on the prairie because after they went over the horizon I never got close enough again to pick the signal back up. GPS will get you that close every time, and much faster than RDF will. The Telemetrum is a good choice for its built-in altimeter functions, and you don't need a handheld radio. Again, you need to take your laptop to the field.
__________________
Adrian Adamson
Featherweight Altimeters LLC

If you have a droid phone I know you can download software so that you can track radio signal locations and use your phone to help track, if you are on the 2 meter APRS frequencies, and since, Verizon and T-Mobil will work at either site, I figure that is a good back up system fro tracking my radios. I figure for hard to find radios that are not GPS equipped, if I place my Arrow antenna on top of one of my painters poles and have the pole sticking up through my drivers door window or my moon roof in my Expedition, and with the long pole reaching up 24', I should be able to hear a signal almost anyware as I drive around thrying to locate it. As the signal gets louder, I can get out of the car and search on foot. I know I can take my laptop out and use the tele-dongle, but I like to make thing more difficult to increase my skill levels. Now does anyone know of a ham radio fox-hunt club in the area?

Help me catch the Fox that is often in my back yard and we can attach one of your trackers to it! LOL

Send by private email more information about using my Droid phone.

My rocket may "only" reach 9,000 ft but even my wife realized that a tracker would be required.

Does anyone make rocket electronics that is not a member of ncrocketry.org?

The tallent in this club is simply amazing!

Great news:

I registered as a member of Tripoli and was almost in a panic this morning, since I still had not received my official TRA number for my Level 1 certification attempt. My emails were being ignored.

Finally today, I received my (snail mail) package from Tripoli and am now an official member:

TRA# 13742

This may sound minor, but I was not sure if Joe would have allowed me to launch my rockets without an official membership number.

Shunt 1, Yes, you would have been allowed to launch - we would have simply indicated on the paperwork "Number Pending". Most of the time, folks can't get away without being a member for long. This rocketry family takes care of their own.

Regarding our March launch - I will have to admit the NWS is getting much better at accurately predicting the wind and moisture and temperatures expected for specific locations many days in advance. When the predictions don't change radically from five days out to two days out to day of, I should have known better and realized they are spot on. Saturday should have been scrubbed before folks ventured out. As it was, great to see there are some hardcore optimists like myself.

When I made the calls to ARTCC and TRACON Saturday morning at 8AM, the flight operators were almost launghing at us. Their instrumentation showed the wind speeds increasing thru the day, with an hour earlier being the calmest. Really. There was hardly any breezes as far east as Ault, but once out in the clear of the prairie, wind speeds and gusts topped 40mph. We were on site at 8:00 AM until 10:30ish and the wind never deminished. 42degrees felt like 20 something in the wind.

And it was very dry - almost too dry. We desperately need spring rains to start falling or April's launch and beyond could be in jeporady. I'm not suggesting the naked rain dances yet but the thought has definately crossed my mind.

Thanks for volunteering Bear. Hope we can make it happen in April - back to the North Site.

Wow, I also bought a Telemetrum. It's a great product. I kept hoping that Jim Amos would finish his MPAC (not sure of spelling) system, but I think that will probably never happen.

We're going to need a club flag system like they have at RC flying clubs to make sure we don't stomp on each others frequencies.

I'll also highly recommend hamtestonline. I swear that this must be a plot by Bdale to get all of us "someday I'll get my ham license" folks to actually do it. The problem is that I'm now getting distracted from rocket building and am instead building a HF SDR radio (and stringing an HF antenna and considering buying an antenna tuner, then a linear amp -- uh-oh this hobby is just as expensive as rocketry!).

The funny thing with Saturday's launch was that I originally did not plan to attend it, since I didn't really have any rockets ready. But the weather seemed so nice that I didn't want to stay in, so I went downstairs and found some of my older model rockets that I could use for the alphabet competition. I then went to Hobby Lobby to buy estes motors and didn't get out to the site until about 12:30. I didn't bother to look at wind reports, but I was starting to notice the trees blowing the further east of Ault that I drove. Still it didn't look that bad, and since I was driving in the direction of the wind it didn't seem that bad (driving back was a different story). Anyway, I got to the site and got out of the car to open the fence and realized there was no way anyone was launching rockets in this wind. I pulled up to the site and of course no one was there. The wind was so bad it was hard to close the car door again. Oh well, hopefully April will work out.

Yeah, I did the same thing about 30 minutes after you did. With all the hams in the club now, we should figure out a frequency we can give regular launch updates on while people are driving in. Better yet, and maybe in addition, a way to update the website from the launch. I have left Longmont on really bad looking days and its perfect up there, and also had it perfect in Longmont and terrible up there.

With the ability to use T-mobile and Verizon 3G at both sites and with Droid phones, (that is what I have so I am familiar with its capabilities) I guess we could log on to this site from our phones and place updates on the forums. Would that work or does it need to be on the home page? Another way would be to call someone who you think is at the site, like Steve (shunt1) did with me and get an update. Then they/you could post it in the forums, unless there is a way we could post it to the home page from our phones with out being the keeper of the web.

With smart phones like the Droid (since that did work), this should be easy to do with a bulk phone text message to all local members.

I need to obtain a list of all cell phone numbers of those who want to be on the launch notification list.

Please send your private numbers to my personal email:

huntworksteve@gmail.com

Step by step, we will figure out how to make this darn technology work for us. 😉

Awesome!

Its on its way to you as a PM and as an email...