old hardware reminiscers support group

[Leo Mauler]

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 at 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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