I used to belong to a 4-H model rocketry group. The great thing about being in a 4-H model rocketry group was that 4-H was primarily a farming-type youth organization. So you had all kinds of farmland access, like being able to shoot off model rockets on a generally square 160 acre field (approximately 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile). That kind of farmland let you shoot off the really big engines.

My high school physics teacher had everyone build a model rocket as the "final project" of the semester, but they had to do something different, not just "rocket goes up, rocket comes down". There were people sticking cockroaches into minature spacesuits, people launching the "egg" rocket, three stage rockets, and two engines fired simultaneously next to each other (didn't work too well that last one, went up four feet and looped back down, nearly spearing the teacher's thigh).

I did a model rocket that could be recovered at night, using a high-intensity flashlight bulb and a couple of N-size batteries in a clear payload. We launched it around midnight on a cloudy moonless night. Its actually a lot easier to track a rocket at night, what with the engine fire showing you where it is on the way up. You need that light to spot it on the way down though.

--- Brian Densmore DensmoreB@ctbsonline.com wrote:

You win, i think. Drat, drat and double drat!

If I'd only kept that SW receiver I built in 1972, or the transmitter my brother built in the 60s complete with vacuum tubes.

So anyone ever use any of the HAM radio options in the kernel? And what's up with that anyway? What use is HAM radio to a computer? Computer generated Morse code? Like there's any living mortal that could translate that! Now using a Linux computer to track a model rocket's statistics, that would be useful! I need to get out and do some model rocketry. Any local places to shoot off some really *BIG* suckers? I know they've got something out Kansas way, but can't remember where. But something up NorthEast here would be nice. Want to get my grandkids involved (ugh, grandfather at 34!).

===== And I always thought: the very simplest words Must be enough. When I say what things are like Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds. That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself Surely you see that.

-- Bertolt Brecht

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