News

All,

The December launch will be held on Saturday December 10th.  It will be the standard monthly launch, one day, with launching beginning at approximately 8am.  We will also be holding our annual members meeting at noon with launching resuming after the meeting.  The location will be at the launch site range head. Reminders will be announced throughout the morning.  If the weather begins to deteriorate listen for announcements for a change of time for the meeting to be held earlier. Should the launch be cancelled, we will schedule a virtual meeting for all to participate. The meeting agenda is below. 

Gary Schneider 

ROC President 

All,
The ROC Board has met and has made the hard decision to cancel ROCstock.  Unfortunately, the rain overnight has made the lakebed unsafe to pass with standing water at the road entrances and very soft in other areas.  The other deciding factor is that per our BLM permit we must provide facilities when holding an event such as our launches and our facilities provider can’t safely deliver either.  See their reply to us regarding delivery below.

Since we will not be able to hold our annual membership meeting at the launch, we will be holding an online election process to vote for the three candidates who submitted their self-nominations for the three open Board of Director seats. 

A message to members will be going out soon with the details.  After the election we will announce the results via an online (Zoom) meeting or at the December launch.

Also, we will be coordinating with BLM and the FAA in regard to holding ROCstock in December.  No guarantees but we will be working on it.
We apologize for this inconvenience and hope to see everyone in December.

Gary Schneider

ROC President

The October launch is a go.

[Previous post below]

Greetings,

We want to let everyone know there is a chance that the October launch may be cancelled.  Our BLM permit expired in September and despite having sent in all the usual paperwork in early spring the BLM is still processing it.  We have been in touch with the BLM and have been told that it is in process, but they are backlogged and will do their best to expedite our permit paperwork.   Until we have a permit we cannot hold an organized launch.  We will post updates as we receive more information.  

Regards,

Gary Schneider

ROC President

The board would like to announce that in 2023 and onward, the spring/summer ROCStock event will occur in April. At this time, the fall/winter event will remain in November.

We appreciate the membership feedback provided in the member survey a few months back that provided us valuable information on month and weekend preferences for both events.

After wrapping up coordination with the various regulatory agencies and our vendors, we have concluded that the weekend of the 2nd Saturday of April is the best option to allow us to avoid the poor weather that continues to plague June events and strain our volunteer resources. This date keeps with our 2nd Saturday tradition-we understand this creates conflicts every 7 years (including 2023) with Easter, but hope that the 3 day format allows people to find adequate time to fly. 

This will be a 3 day event, with normal ROCStock fee structures (including no youth discounts). The June launch will return to a single day monthly event with normal monthly launch fee structures and youth discounts for groups in compliance with the youth policy.

We understand that any such change will have impacts on planning, as such, desired to get the word out as quickly as possible. 

Unrelatedly, due to some recent inquiries, we would like to remind folks that at this time there are no plans for future ROCTober events beyond the normal monthly launches in October. When this event started a decade ago, we had great volunteer support, and a few dedicated individuals putting in hundreds of hours of planning time for the event each year. That support waned significantly over the years, and additionally the folks primarily responsible for coordination efforts have undertaken other responsibilities. ROC continues to support significantly discounted youth flying at our regular monthly launches allowing us to serve over 1,000 youth fliers annually.

Please feel free to reach out through https://rocstock.org/contact-us/ if you have any questions. 

-Andrew Wimmer

Rocketry Organization of California Vice President

The ROC board has been monitoring the weather conditions out in Lucerne for this weekend’s launch and has made the difficult decision to cancel the launch. Conditions have been steadily worsening with incoming rain and we do not want a repeat of what happened at ROCtober when the forecast was for light showers with minimal amounts of rain and then we all woke up to a couple of inches of water on the lakebed.
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we need to keep the safety of everyone the top priority. We will see everyone in October.
Gary Schneider
ROC President