Tag: recovery

Day 20-Rocket Recovery Teams

What would a rocket launch be without a bunch of crazy, fun-loving, competitive people willing to trompe through water, mud, trees, tall grass, and thick underbrush in order to see who can recover the most rockets and bring them back to smiling students? And let’s not forget encounter, pigs, snakes, ants, wasps, bees, chiggers, mosquitos, cows, cup eating donkeys, and any manor of small animals that run out from under foot unexpectedly.

This crews hardest job, is not locating and recovering the rockets, but instead getting the compass to give an accurate azimuth, (sometimes they stick), and inputting the coordinates in the Garman in time to beat the other team to the location.

Finding the rockets depends a lot on good coordinates, a good sense of direction, good eye balling of where you saw it go down, and a whole lot of pure luck.

A perfect launch and recovery deployment can put the vehicle almost back in easy distance and sight to find. On the other hand a high altitude deployment can carry the rocket for a long time, making what  looks like right over there, end up to be a few pastures over, which entails a whole lot of walking and searching. And of course a ballistic landing means searching and digging.

No matter the circumstances, each rocket is a valuable learning tool for each class, and the ultimate goal of these teams is to recover all of it they can, and return it to those students.

Quite honestly, the recovery teams, probably have the most fun, and least stressful job of the group. Most of them are repeat crew members from year to year and wouldn’t miss it given the chance.

They all work closely with the Rocket Cops Crew, who also lend their ears, eyes, and communications to the teams on the ground. Officer Braxton Roemer coordinates the recovery teams.

This years’ teams included: Team 1, Jeff and Tina Landis; Team 2, Jerry and Judith Luckenbach; Team 3, Barry and Ann Bradley; Team 4, Steve and Ginger Burow; Team 5, Todd and Troy Kneese; Team 6, Guy Chadwick, Brett Burow, and Brittany Beisert ; Team 7, Freddie Kruse. There was also a 3 person team from Alpha Search and Recovery out of Houston that was here to observe, and helped in place of Team 7 on Sunday.

This group works and plays hard the whole weekend. They love to have fun while out there searching and recovering rockets. They are each here because they want to help SystemsGo and the students be successful and they all take that very seriously.

Thank you recovery teams for being a vital and important part of the project. This year this group had 97% recovery rate for all the rockets launched. Congratulations and thank you all for all your hard work.

www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.

Day 14-A Thank You to our Rocket Cops

This is my second edition of thank yous, and probably won’t be the last because it takes so many people to put on a production of this magnitude. Today’s shout out goes to our 3 Rocket Cops that help us each year.

Officer 95, Braxton Roemer, Officer 93, Chris Ayala, and Officer Shane Purvis, better known as Spotter Hill. Sorry Shane I just couldn’t remember your number so I am remiss to have to leave it out. We all referred to you as Spotter Hill most often through the weekend so that is what I tend to remember.

These officers gave of their time and talents to come head up and help our recovery efforts as well as keep everyone safe. Officer Roemer was our recovery team leader out in the field, assigning us our positions as well as keeping us coordinated and located out in the pastures as we hunted down rockets. He handled our radio communications, and assisted in rocket disarmament.

Officer Ayala provided additional ground support in recovery, front gate operations and traffic control. He commanded the gate in order to keep everyone safe and traffic stopped during testing.

Officer Purvis maintained position on top of Spotter Hill, with a bird’s-eye view of the area. He was quite often the only eye on the rockets at times when altitude and distance took them from the rest of recovery’s view.

I am quite sure that there is plenty more that went on behind the scenes with these gentlemen that I may not be aware of, and for that let me just say that all that they did was needed and appreciated by all the rest of the crew. They are a wonderful group of law enforcement officers, and we were privileged to have them with us.

Thank each one of you for spending these four days with the students, the rest of the volunteers, and the whole SystemsGo group.

We all enjoy working with each one of you, the SystemsGo Rocket Cops!

www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.