Quote from Admin on December 28, 2022, 6:10 pm

Now that the tumult of the holiday season has subsided and as 2022 quickly comes to a close, I'd like to take a few moments of your time to recap and comment on the past year of CENJARS and the general state of our club.

First, I'd like to thank you all for making my first year of assuming the presidency of CENJARS an easy one. The overall job is not a particularly difficult one. In fact, the most difficult thing I've found is calling a launch based upon the weather. Fortunately, if I recall correctly, this only occurred with our October launch but there were a few which caused me some trepidation until the final few days prior to the launch. Let's hope that we have similar luck with the weather in the coming year. Thank you all for re-electing me to the presidency for 2023.

CENJARS had many successful launches this past year — this includes our scheduled monthly launches and the myriad outreach launches that the club entertained. Along with some of the usual CENJARS outreaches — Quail Hill, Millstone Scouts, and the Wall Kid's Day — we were invited to some new outreach events — the Arbor School and the Hope Lutheran Summer School. These outreach events are always both fun and rewarding. I realize that many in the club may have family and employment obligation that preclude their involvement with these outreach events but, if you can, consider joining us for one.

CENJARS held a very fun and enjoyable picnic launch once again this year. A delightful day for launching replete with good food and camaraderie. Let's hope to keep this tradition alive with next year's picnic launch.

CENJARS also observed its 15th anniversary in October. I and a few others provided food and drink to commemorate this milestone at the launch.

Financially, CENJARS is in good shape. Despite some expenditures in the past year, the club is still well in the black. This is probably a good time to mention that, if you haven't already, it is time to renew your membership for 2023.

When I took the helm this past year, I was determined to grow our membership. One of the ways to do that was to improve the CENJARS website. My son, Kevin, acquired a small but fast Linux server, and began the initial configuration and template design. I took it over from there. The most difficult part of the project was acquiring the domain name (CENJARS.org) from GoDaddy. I've taken over domains in the past and I never had such a difficult time doing so as I did with acquiring the CENJARS.org domain from GoDaddy. However, it was finally procured so that I could setup the DNS to point to the server which Kevin acquired for the website.

The new website contains much of the same information as on the former (organized for better access); however, it's also been augmented to allow more interaction with you, the CENJARS members. There is now an Event Calendar, a Gallery, and a Forum on the new website. Some of you have created accounts on the new website. Thank you! I keep stressing that all of you should setup an account and use this site! Several of our club photographers and videographers have contributed their product to the Gallery. The Forum has seen some member activity but I'd love to see more, much more. So, please sign up, create an account and, this goes for everyone, please edit your account's profile. While some of the account names are obvious, others are not. If we're to use the site to is fullest potential, we need to know who we are using it with. An avatar, personal name and some brief biographical information would be welcomed.

I have posted dates of some of the large rocket launch events in the website's Calendar. Recently announced was the dates of MDRA's Red Glare. Red Glare is the first weekend of April 2023 which would normally be our April scheduled launch. I postponed this past year's April launch because of Red Glare conflict and the fact that a good number of our CENJARS membership attended the Red Glare launch, including your Poobah.

Speaking of membership, the membership in CENJARS grew considerably over the past year. It's great to see more people interested in rocketry joining us to fly. I hope to see this trend continue in the coming year. Invite your friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. to our launches. Sometimes, all it takes is witnessing a launch to spark the fire.

I have been approached many times over the past year by rocketeers wanting to join CENJARS to do their certification flights. Sadly, due to our proximity to KBLM (Monmouth Executive Airport), we'd never get an FAA COA (waiver) for high power. I have looked at some prospective sites and Eric had suggested one that might serve us, if we can get the permission to use these sites, as an alternate CENJARS launch site AND allow us to fly high power with an FAA COA. I'm not suggesting we forego our present launch location; I'd simply like a way to embrace the desires of other rocketeers. Even if we could only get a site that would satisfy L1 high power constraints, that would allow CENJARS to entertain many of the requests I've received in the past year and grow the club.

At a recent get together with some of the club officers, there was a discussion about rocket safety. There have been some flights at the CENJARS field that were questionably stable. CENJARS has never had a formal RSO (range safety officer) flight safety and approval process; perhaps, it's time to implement one. We don't want to deny anyone wanting to fly, but if the rocket is not sound or stable we need to keep those rockets off of the pads to insure that nobody or any property is injured. We will discuss this amongst officers in the coming weeks. This may entail something as simple as a rocket weigh-in and a check to see if its TTW (thrust-to-weight) ratio for the selected motor is sufficient. If something looks questionably stable, a string test may be requested.

Lastly, we are guests at the Wall HS Athletic Complex. If you see some of our rocket detritus (motor casings, spent igniters, plugs, wadding, etc.) on the field, please pick it up and put it into the trash or into one of the rubbish boxes near the pads. Let's leave the field as clean or cleaner than before we arrived.