We had a good meeting yesterday at Growler's with 10 members. Here are some notes from the meeting:
1. We've gotten a letter from the St. Louis Area Boy Scouts Council asking for assistance in an rocket event at our August scheduled Buder Park Launch. After some discussion, we decided as a group to respond that we could accomodate up to 200 scouts on August 17th - assuming the park is available and that there is enough participation from the membership. The scouts may build rockets beforehand or at the event - but that is to be yet determined. This will be discussed at the July meeting.
2. The membership has agreed to allocate $500 from our treasury to purchase an assortment of hats and t-shirts with the SLRA logo for sale to members and to the public. The treasury will recover the costs as the merchandise is sold. We will be using a local shop that has produced quality items in the past and should be better than our Cafe Press Internet experience. Several members expressed interest in polo shirts with an embroidered logo at a higher cost and members will be able to sign up for these also. We intend to have the items available for our July 20th launch at the Science Center. Thanks to Dan Welling and Rob Chapie for looking into possible suppliers.
3. The director of the St Louis Science Center Planetarium, John Lakey, has contacted us to verify that we are still planning to have the launch at the Science Center on July 20th. We have replied yes and John plans to attend our July 9th meeting to discuss details. The membership discussed several ideas and we are going to acquire 50 rocket kits to be sold to the public to be assembled for flight at the launch. We discussed some of the details and are also creating a list of questions for John. We will need the help of the membership for this event and we plan to have separate web site postings to help get a list of volunteers. This is an important public outreach for SLRA and will be a fun celebration of the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20th 1969 and the 50th anniversary of the McDonnell Planetarium. The launch will be held at the archery field - right next to the planetarium and we will have static displays both inside and outside. All ideas are welcome to make this event successful.
4. Our current treasury balance is $2158.71 and we had our first PayPal dues payment. Heino Pull presented receipts for a year of web service ($114.90 and the domain costs ($13.50) for St. Louis Rocketry.Com.
5. The electric match purchase is almost complete - waiting on payment before the final order is done. Dan Welling is coordinating this purchase.
6. Look for a announcement on the web site for the status of the scheduled Buder Park launch on Saturday, June 15th. I have visited the park and all is well with the fields there. We have not heard much interest (1 interested flier at the meeting) in the upcoming launch, but are working on assessing the weather and to see who can move equipment and help out. Please add a comment to this post if you are interested in flying on Saturday or are willing to help out. It is currently scheduled for 12:30 to 5 PM, but may be curtailed if there isn't enough interest. The current forecast for Saturday is for isolated thunder storms (30% chance of rain), winds up to 15 MPH and 87 degree high.
Please comment on this post if you have any comments or questions.
Heino Pull
SLRA Secretary