A Blast in Parkville!

English Landing, Saturday, October 4th: According the club members of the Kansas City Association of Rocketry (KCAR) this day's event was the biggest so far of the annual gatrhering of amateur rocket scientists in Parkville. Called October Skies, the event is organized yearly by H.M.S. Beagle, Kansas City's science store. The KCAR members run the entire show and provided the necessary expertise needed to flawlessly launch over 100 rockets. Beagle personnel, Leif Bahl, Bill Nedblake and John Kuhns handled the check in for all aspriring rocket scientists.

One participant's father was over heard telling another, "Isn't it great what these folks are doing for parkville?" I later found out that two bus loads of students and teachers came for the day from Turner Middle School's Science Club, nearly each student had a rocket to launch. Launches were done for prizes in two catagories. First was the "spot landing" where the participants' rockets were supposed to land as closes as possible to am R2D2 robot model, and secondly there was "flight duration." The wind wasn't usually a factor, but for some of the lighter rockets with larger engines the duration of flight was truly awesome. One rocket we watched propably landed on Joe Millers deck.

Local restaurants, including those as far away as Nick & Jakes, reported they had the largest day in months. Tommy T's owner Tom Hutsler said his burger joint had the biggest day since they opened.