First off I would like to sincerely thank Alan for his years of service
to the prefecture. I started flying at Bayboro about six years ago.
Alan has been the only prefect I have known here and he has taught me much.
Professionally, I am an electrical engineer and started my career in the
traction power industry (electrification of light and heavy rail transit
systems - megawatt level stuff) in 1986 and for the last 23 years have
worked in the semiconductor industry as an applications and systems
engineer for power supply control integrated circuits (milliwatts to a
couple hundred watts).
As far as my rocketry interests are concerned, I currently fly
experimental motors almost exclusively and attend almost every launch
unless work or other event takes me out of town on a launch weekend. I
can usually be found sitting somewhere near Alan's truck enjoying good
conversation while not flying or acting as LSO. The rockets I fly are a
mix of scratch built and kits with my preference being the scratch built
ones. They just seem more satisfying to me and all three of my
certification rockets are scratch builds. I enjoy helping novice or
other flyers when there are issues, questions or just another set of
hands to help get a rocket on the pad. Three years or so ago, Alan
asked me about designing and building a new launch control system to
replace the aging one we had at the time. I designed, built and
maintain the system we are currently using.
I see the prefecture as it currently exists as a pretty well running
machine and see no reason to deviate from our current practices. One
recent change is worth mentioning though. The initiative Alan started
to "draft" more people into participating in the RSO and LSO duties on
Saturdays is good and should continue in my opinion. Previously, the
same five or six people did all of that work and more participation from
the general membership was and is needed. Not all of the regular
contributors can attend every launch and on the occasions when there
were only a couple in attendance, they would end up spending most of the
launch doing the RSO and LSO functions and not able to fly very much,
sometimes not at all if it was a busy launch.
Another area that I feel deserves mention is collegiate teams coming to
Bayboro to fly. These are always fun and good to see. The projects are
very interesting and most are well thought out and executed.
Occasionally we have had a team come out that had some issues and some
of those issues have had safety implications. A large rocket going to
10,000 feet or more, out of sight, and no indication or idea of how or
where it made it back to the ground is not a good thing. We all have
issues with a rocket from time to time, but I think the collegiate
teams, especially the ones flying larger projects, need to have a
demonstrably competent mentor, who has been an integral part of the
project through design, construction and testing, present present at the
launch and closely overseeing their efforts. There has not been a
mishap like I mentioned for a couple of years now and I think that is in
large part due to the teams coming in having that mentor, be it one of
our members or not. This should continue to be the case. I would not
want to discourage any team from participating, but safety has to come
first.
For the elephant in the room, I cannot see resuming launch operations
until the COVID-19 problem is under much better control than it is
currently. What that actually means is unclear at the moment and the
newer supposedly more contagious strains now detected in the U.S. only
complicate matters further. All I can say is that I would consult with
people I consider knowledgeable about such things and with some of the
more senior actively participating club members and make decisions based
on that input on a month to month basis. I am not an epidemiologist,
and my expertise is not in the biological sciences. Consequently, I
would have to rely on others with real knowledge in this area for
guidance. While it is fun to come out, fly and see friends, flying
rockets on the weekend is not an essential activity and the travel
required for most of us to attend a launch does increase the risk of
contracting the disease. I would not want our activities to be even a
contributing factor to someone getting infected and having a bad outcome
or taking the infection to a loved one and have similar results.
Regards,
Kurt Hesse
