It is with great pleasure that the Reaction Research Society announces the 2025 RCE Challenge. The competition will begin on September 15th, 2025, and will end on June 15th, 2026. The rules for this year’s competition are currently under review by the RCE judging committee, and will clarify issues with the 2023 and 2024 ruleset.
All current information for the competition will be posted on the challenge’s dedicated page here, but additional posts will be made when updates are made.
On the final Saturday of May, UCLA held the capstone event for their underclassmen rocketry program students. Most, if not all, of these students will go on to join Rocket Project at UCLA.
UCLA students preparing their next model rocket for launch
The launches started around 10am, and went on until about 2pm. A couple of groups had two-stage rockets, thought most were single-stage. Out of all the groups, only one had their parachute deploy successfully. Also, one group had an issue with the fins on their rocket, leading to it careening south towards the mountains.
Special thanks to Frank for serving as our pyro-op for the event. Also thanks to Osvaldo, as he did some work on our bathroom in the afternoon, after UCLA had left, and shade became available.
Stay tuned for updates as they come out. The June monthly meeting will be on Friday the 13th. Our next work event will be announced then as well.
At this month’s work party we had quite a bit set on our plate. The biggest concern was getting the electrical grid finished. Thankfully, Dimitri and his friend George Warner were successful in doing just that. The whole of the MTA can now be powered, from the far northern pad, all the way to the observation bunker in the south. In addition, the whole grid can be powered from our large military generator, from the Dosa Building’s solar and battery array, or it can even be back-fed by a generator connected to the second assembly area’s electrical box.
Our military surplus generator, powering the whole of the MTA.A Firman generator powering the MTA by backfeeding into the secondary assembly area’s power box.
In addition, one of our side-objectives was to finish painting the gate for Fort George. It was a messy process; The sun and wind made the paint tack very quickly, and caused droplets to spray everywhere. Thankfully we got a first coat done. In addition, we painted numbers on the various containers across the property, according to a numbering scheme previously created by Dave Nordling. You can see both in a before and after below.
Fort George, with a brown primer coat, taken at the beginning of the day’s work.Fort George after painting had been completed, including new container number markings.
In addition, Dimitri and George hung a new sign on the Dosa Building. The sign was manufactured by Bill Nelson, who also will be making a sign for Fort George. We appreciate his help, both with this and other projects, including his work with our local community colleges
Dave Nordling standing below the newly installed Dosa Building sign.
Finally, Dave, Joel, Michael Rouleau and Bill Inman helped perform brush clearance across the site. Overgrowth has been an issue in the past, but as of late we and our collegiate clients have been doing a fantastic job of keeping the fauna cut back.
Thanks to everyone who participated, including the kids we dragged along with us. Please stay tuned as we continue to improve and clean up the MTA. Members will receive notice by email two weeks prior to all monthly Work Parties.
