CMASS July

14 years in the planning! With our last NEMROC in 1991, the New England landscape has been without a NEMROC for far too long. Well that's all over now. We're back!

I had been pinging the folks at CMASS for about 2 years about revitalizing the NEMROC conventions. During this current year, everyone seemed very positive about it, but we never seemed to be able to get off of our collective butts and actually do anything with regards to planning. Then about 6 weeks ago, Bill Spadafora asked the question "Are we really going to do this or not?"

That was the right question to ask, as it lit a fire under a very dedicated and hard working group of people who did a phenomenal job in pulling together a full blown convention in a very short period of time! It began as a small, local event. Something to "get our feet wet", as it were with regard to running a NEMROC again. Sort of getting us ready for next year.

Well, word went out and it grew very quickly and it was realized that we had a real convention on our hands and only a month to pull it all together. I can't claim any of the credit either as I was one of the many sideline people helping where my time permitted.

We had about 50 people attend from the north east, including Connecticut and New York. We had several build sessions and 3 booked classrooms with a wide array of topics. We had a good mix of old and young, skilled and novice, guy and gal. It was an incredible thrill for me, one of the original NEMROC founders, to walk in the door with the realization that NEMROC was back.

I also had the privilege of participating as a manufacturer and helping out the way Estes help out back in the 80's and 90's. I had new single sheet catalogs printed up just for the occasion and also created a newly decorated NEMROC version of the Caution rocket. It was also our pleasure to donate 15 UFFO model rocket kits for a Make It Take It session in the morning.

If you didn't attend you missed out on a wonderful day of fun. What better way to spend a raining New England October day than in the company of fellow rocketeers!? If you DID attend, you got a taste of what can be.

Plans are ALREADY underway for NEMROC'06. Bigger, better, more intense. Mark your calendars and find out why conventions are so much fun and so important to the health of our wonderful hobby!

Special thanks to Bill Spadafora, Ed Pattison-Gordon, Bob Krech, Tony Vincent, Howard Greenblatt, Peter Graves, Len Fehskens, Steve Byan, Paul Manning, Mike O'Malley, Ron Quattrochi, Bill Ralston, John LoVerso, John Buscaglia, Alan Swanson, John Harland and others too numerous to mention. A fine job by all!