Tag Archives: LAPD

75th anniversary symposium was a success!

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The Reaction Research Society (RRS.ORG) was happy to celebrate its 75th anniversary as the country’s oldest continuously operating amateur rocketry society on April 21, 2018. At the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, California, we shared this special occasion with over 300 people from the Los Angeles and San Diego area and welcomed several guests from places further away.

(left to right) Osvaldo Tarditti, Bill Janczewski, Dave Nordling, Jim Gross, Frank Miuccio, Larry Hoffing, Alastair Martin, Richard Garcia, Bill Claybaugh, Drew Cortopassi, Chris Lujan

RRS member, Michael Lunny mans the front desk at the 2018 RRS symposium

RRS members, Jim Gross and John Mariano at the 2018 symposium

Osvaldo Tarditti, George James, George Dosa and Jerry Irvine at the RRS symposium

Bill Claybaugh and RRS founder, George James, at the 2018 RRS symposium

The RRS had a display of some of our society projects past and present. Also, some of our members had their projects on display including Richard Garcia’s liquid rocket and Bill Claybaugh’s massive two-stage rocket.

Richard Garcia discusses his liquid rocket vehicle at the 2018 symposium

An early liquid rocket test motor from George Dosa, furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid

RRS micrograin rockets on display with historical notes

Bill Claybaugh, Osvaldo Tarditti and Bill Janczewski stand before Claybaugh’s two-stage solid rocket on display

Photo montage of micrograin rocket launches

All thirteen RRS mail flights from 1947 – 1990

We had copies of the special 75th anniversary edition of the RRS Astrojet newsletter available for sale at the symposium. Thank you to Bill Janczewski for his hard work in making this high quality newsletter and the bright sign on the column for everyone to see as they came in. The Astrojet can still be purchased through our RRS.ORG website at our PayPal button if you write a note for “Astrojet, (X) copies” and send your mailing address.

Or just simply contact the RRS by email.
secretary@rrs.org

75th anniversary issue of the Astrojet newsletter on sale

We shared our exhibition space with the Los Angeles Air Force Base’s (LA AFB) Space and Missile Command (SMC) as they presented the long history of SMC. Our thanks to Lt. Col. Porter and his team for having a huge display of the Air Force’s contributions to space, national security and improvements to our daily lives. Also, the air-driven rocket launcher demonstration in the courtyard was a big hit.

Karen Austin, Director of SMC History at the 2018 RRS symposium

LA AFB SMC history on display at the 2018 RRS symposium

Lt. Col. Porter speaks at the SMC history exhibit

Also, just outside the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, was our colleagues at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Community Safety Partnership (CSP). Officers who have supported and participated in the rocket build classes we’ve had with Watts and Compton area schools were on hand to answer questions and show off the fun we’ve had over this last year.

LAPD CSP at the 2018 RRS symposium

We had several universities exhibiting and presenting at the RRS symposium including University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Southern California (USC) and California State University Long Beach (CSULB). All of them had impressive work to show with flights pending in just a few weeks before the semester or quarter ends.

CSU Long Beach exhibits and presents at the 2018 RRS symposium

The Additive Rocket Corporation of San Diego exhibited and presented their unique technology.

The Additive Rocket Corporation of San Diego exhibits and presents at the RRS symposium

Other exhibitors at the RRS symposium was our fellow amateur rocketry group, Rocketry Organization of California (ROC).
Rocketry Organization of California

ROC on display at the 2018 RRS symposium

The Notre Dame Academy was also present at our symposium.
Notre Dame Academy – WIkipedia

Notre Dame Academy at the 2018 RRS symposium

Our friends at the China Lake Museum also had a display to show the Navy’s contributions to rocketry and the national defense.
China Lake Museum

China Lake Museum on display at 2018 RRS symposium

U.S. Rockets was also exhibiting at the RRS symposium.
U.S. Rockets – Jerry Irvine

U.S. Rockets exhibiting at the RRS symposium

We had several speakers presenting on current and historical topics of professional and amateur rocketry including Jacky Calvignac of Northrop Grumman, our founder George James of his organization, The Rocket Research Institute (RRI), John Steinmeyer of Orbital-ATK and David Krause of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia who called in by Skype.

George James, founder of the RRS, presents on behalf of the RRI

Jacky Calvignac shows the propulsion programs at Northrop Grumman

High School Rocket Propulsion Lab and new RRS members present their test firings from the RRS MTA

Aerospace Corporation’s presentation on additive manufactured propellant grains

We thank all of our attendees, presenters, exhibitors and just everyone who stopped in and had a good time with us. The RRS would like to especially thank Tony Richards for his photography taken at the RRS symposium.

The RRS will discuss at our next monthly meeting on May 11th if we’ll have another symposium next year in 2019. Based on the overwhelming response, this is very likely.

October 2017 meeting

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The RRS held its monthly meeting this Friday, October 13, 2017 at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center. Our usual meeting room was unavailable that night so we met upstairs in conference room “F”. We called the meeting to order at 7:30pm and read off the treasurer’s report.

Frank, Osvaldo and Larry had just finished the last of the five sessions with Grape Street Elementary in Watts, our latest educational program supported by (http://pted.org/Valtrex.php) the LAPD CSP program. 23 kids were in this program and 13 alpha rockets were prepared including one for LAPD and another for the video crew who was kind enough to document each session. Osvaldo has made a really neat rack mounting system for the freshly painted but still unloaded alphas.

alpha rocket rack mounting system

Richard has built a larger rocket candy motor to fly with a parachute recovery system he has built. He brought part of his pyrotechnic actuated dual-deployment system to the meeting. Also in the photo is a cruciform-style parachute that was given to me for use on a beta rocket.

parachute and pyrotechnic dual-deployment mechanism

My alpha with a PVC payload tube and parachute recovery system is still in work pending resolution of some internal mounting issues. Osvaldo was kind enough to drill a hole in the point of an alpha aluminum nose cone with which I hope to fly a pitot-tube type https://marblerestorationco.com/order-tramadol-online/ flight speed sensor I am making.

alpha aluminum nose cone with hollow tip

The launch event was originally scheduled for next Saturday, October 21st, however, the RRS MTA will not be available as Polaris Propulsion is still using the site. The event will be rescheduled to no earlier than Saturday, November 11th. Please check the forum for the most up to date news on launch.

Alastair Martin, one of our newest members, had edited the footage taken from the last LAPD launch event in July. He showed his video for the membership at the meeting which was quite impressive. We hope to have this on the RRS YouTube channel soon.

YouTube – RRS channel

Alastair and his brother had some ideas on how to internally mount a camera within the payload tube of the alpha he hopes to fly at the next event. We discussed these after the meeting was over.

The quarterly update on the SuperDosa project was given. Richard has repaired the graphite dust gathering apparatus for his lathe and hopes to get some of the nozzle pucks turned out for the ballistic evaluation motor (BEM) we are building. Osvaldo is looking for a machinist with a mill to make the upper and lower plate for the BEM. I have bought an adapter fitting for the 5,000 psi pressure transmitter I bought but need to get 1/4″ SS tubing. I am also compiling a list of our chemical materials to make our first batch of the RRS standard propellant mixture.

A discussion of the 75th anniversary symposium was started however with all the work for the Grape Street Elementary program being done, Frank wanted to start discussion at next (https://www.softclinicgenx.com/prednisone/) month’s meeting in November. I have already started to ask some of our previous speakers to return including NASA, AFRL and UCLA. We hope to have many if not all of last year’s speakers return for the April 14, 2018 event. Frank has again agreed to be the symposium coordinator.

The 75th anniversary issue of the Astrojet newsletter was discussed. This special one-time issue for the RRS 75th anniversary will be in print only and issued January 6, 2018. I have approached several people already, but I am making a wider call for articles to all of our membership. Two to three paragraphs on singular subjects related to rocketry past, present and particularly in the future are desired. The submittal deadline is November 15th. Bill Janczewsky has agreed to both contribute an article and help me in producing this one-time print publication to interested parties who provide their mailing address, pay their annual membership dues ($40) and the added price of the issue’s publication (TBD). The cost goes to benefit the society functions including the upcoming symposium.

To all members and invited contributors, send me your ideas or drafts as soon as possible. There is only one month left before the November 15th deadline.
secretary@rrs.org

The RRS history project continues as Richard Garcia has added to our archives with more newsletters and other past publications given by past and present members. I hope to schedule a few interviews with some of our long-time past members depending on schedules. John Mariano is helping me set this up.

UCLA sent two students, John Harnsberger and Nick Kuenning, to the meeting and gave us a rundown of the three projects they are working including their liquid rocket engine (Project Ares) now entering hot-fire testing at the FAR site. They are still working on a few issues with instrumentation, but will be back in hot-fire test again very soon.

USC RPL wasn’t able to come to the meeting but we hope to hear about their goals and objectives for this year soon. USC had indicated that they wanted to fire three solid motors at each of three different testing days. USC has already began testing at the FAR site, but we hope to have the MTA available to support USC on one of these occasions.

Next month will be nominations for the executive council. Larry will be putting forth the ballots to the administrative membership after the meeting with voting taking place in December before the next meeting (December 8th). Results will be announced in the December meeting.

We adjourned promptly at 9:00 pm. The next RRS monthly meeting will be Friday, November 10th.

If there is anything missing or misstated, please let me know. secretary@rrs.org

September 2017 meeting

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The RRS held our monthly meeting on September 8, 2017. We got a late start to the meeting, but I did add a simple 9-inch clock to the room at the start. This will be a useful feature in future meetings.

After the treasury report, we discussed suppliers for making our rocket parts. It was decided that we stick to local suppliers as this has been our tradition and southern California has many great options.

The conversation turned to the upcoming alpha build event with LAPD CSP. This second event with a new batch of students from Imperial Courts will run on five Friday’s starting September 15th. The launch event will take place on Saturday, October 21st.

USC RPL will be helping at the first session of the next RRS build event. USC was not able to come to this month’s meeting to give us status on their upcoming projects.

The RRS usually does demonstrations during the event like the CO2 cartridge rocket on a string to demonstrate the principle of jet propulsion. We discussed other demonstrations such as the vinegar-baking soda rocket. Further, we discussed some of the things that could be done better such as to focus less on the history of rocketry and spend more time explaining fundamental concepts from physics and science. The RRS is continually improving our program to make better presentations.

vinegar and baking soda rocket

Frank had said that USC plans to fire several motors at the MTA in the coming months. The MTA should be available for the October 21st launch. UCLA will also be working on their liquid rocket this fall.

Osvaldo showed the launch footage from the camera mounted on LAPD’s alpha. The spin rate from the camera hanging off the fin was much faster making it tough to see much but in individual frames you can make out buildings below getting smaller. The bright sun from the clear skies unfortunately obscured any view as the rocket descended. Osvaldo is working on the film footage and we should have something compiled soon.

We need to start mounting the camera internally rather than hanging it externally on the fin as has been hastily done in the past. I have been working with Alastair on such a setup inside a payload tube. The “808” keychain cameras come from a range of suppliers with more and more features including high resolution video. I’m thinking of getting a few for myself. They seem to be very robust with a long running time with the XD memory card.

There have been several other payload ideas discussed for upcoming alphas. Osvaldo and I discussed improvements to my timer circuit to go with my parachute system.

During the first LAPD CSP event with the students of Jordan Downs, a few local news crews had filmed the event including KTLA 5 and Telemundo 34. Telemundo was kind enough to give us the segment they broadcast on July 14th. It was in Spanish with Spanish subtitles so I hope we can work on making an English-subtitled version and post it on our YouTube channel.

YouTube – RRS channel

Bill Janczewski was going to work on a new design for an RRS membership card. Although the RRS does not issue membership cards to our members as they had in the past, some of our members have indicated interest. Perhaps by special request, we can have a membership card available for a nominal cost (in addition to paying your annual dues). The proceeds would go to fund the society projects. Right now, this is a task in progress. For those that are interested, let me know.

I would like to start gathering articles for the upcoming 75th anniversary newsletter. I’ve already spoken to a few of our contributors. I’d like to have all submittals by December 15th.

The anniversary newsletter will be issued January 6, 2018, and will be available in print only. The price per copy is still under discussion, but all proceeds fund the society.

Bill Claybaugh donated his solid propellant testing rig and a thrust stand to the society. We are thankful for his donation. Our director of research, Richard Garcia, is going to work with this hardware to make use of it soon at the MTA.

Claybaugh solid propellant test rig including mandrel and thrust stand

Steve Majdali was kind enough to donate a quantity of silicone oil to the society. This material is useful as a mold release compound for the solid propellant grain casting process.

As a final entry, I was able to meet with Barbara Cipperly, the widow of one of the RRS founders, John Cipperly. John passed away December 31, 2013, at his home in La Crescenta. I am working with Barbara to get a brief biography for our “History” and “Founders” tab on the RRS website. I hope to have the final version posted soon. He had several newsletters saved over the decades and the RRS was glad to accept these from the Cipperly for the society archives.

donated newsletters and literature from Barbara Cipperly

The meeting adjourned late at 9:20pm. Our next meeting will be Friday, October 13, 2017.

Frank had said that we’ll start to talk about the upcoming 75th anniversary symposium in the next meeting. Also, we’re due for an update on the SuperDosa project. I’ll be posting next month’s agenda on the forum. I would recommend all of our members go to the website “rrs.org” regularly.

If there are any questions or corrections, let me know.
secretary@rrs.org