Attending: Dave W,
Julie P,
Stellan L,
Dan S,
Ed S.,
Gerald N,
Michael W.
Call to order: President Dave W called the meeting to order at 2010 at the home of G. Nordley.

Reports:

    President’s Report:

    Dave reported on his recent test flights of the yellow Tomahawk HPR rocket with the new data system. He recorded data in flight and played it back after to generate the charts he had to pass around.

    Treasurer’s Report:

    We still have money.

    Michael is still having problems with getting historical account information from Wells Fargo, and feels he will fail his goal of having all the historical records cleared up by year end.

    Ed Stokke officially joined as a member and we agreed to pre-extend (pretend?) the 2 remaining weeks of 2008 onto a 2009 membership for him.

    Michael reminded people that all other memberships would expire at the end of the month.

    Gerald and Julie renewed for 2009.

    State of Peroxide:

    Dave W visited the Ranch recently and said things were still in place. The generator has been run and is fine. The refrigerator is fine. Chucks paperwork is progressing well.

    There was discussion on building the peroxide filtering system that Kevin talked about last meeting but there has been no followup yet.

    Michael mentioned that money spent by members in support of the Ranch, it’s maintenance and upkeep can be considered donations to the club and tax deductible if documented.


    Other Business:

    Michael showed a copy of new FAA Rules for Amateur Rockets. The burn time regulations have been removed and new classes created to accommodate liquid fuel experimentation.  The new environment should be more logical and less restrictive for groups looking to fly vehicles of less than 200,000 lf-sec of thrust.

    Julie brought some “show and tell” electronic items:

    • controller demonstration boards with flash chips and speakers, about the size of a cell phone, that cost about $20. 
    • “Dragon” ICE (In Circuit Emulation) board for about $50. 
    • Midi sequencer midi-filers with read-in, read out capability. 
    • Piano roll scanner board that attaches to an optical reader through a USB interface. It does single bit samples at 1MHz with 800k going back to the CPU. 
    • Large midi-controller boards – 3 for $60.  These are data rate limited by the compact flash. 

    There was much technical talk.  Comment: for data collection, analog-to-digital conversion rates are the bottleneck.  Controllers are good for setting up timing signals.

Adjourned:

Gerald moved to adjourn, Stellan seconded.
Passed without objection at 2100 16 Dec. 2008.
General Meeting #334