It has occurred to me that most of the current PARC members have never met me, seen me or know anything about me (not necessarily a bad thing!) other than the fact that I am some faceless, obscure entity that produced and maintains the clubs web site. So for the curious or nosey ;-) here is a bit about me and how I fit into the club.

Well firstly I got into rocketry in 2000 when I decided to break the monotony of my weekends by finding a hobby - I went to Stanbridges Hobbies and walked out with an Estes 'Code Red' starter kit - this was soon followed by a few Aerotech rockets and when I purchased them I was informed that I would have to join PARC if I wanted to fly them. PARC had a display on at the local Astrofeast event and I raced down there to join PARC, that was some time around 2001 (I think).

I flew rockets out at Toodyay until around 2003 before packing my bags and moving to Albany to help my folks build their house. Sadly the weather down here is so bad that the house keeps getting half destroyed and 5 years later I am still here STILL trying to build the house! As of this writing 11th July 2008, the front of our house has been ripped off in a violent storm so I guess I will be here for a while longer yet. The web site and forums that I used to administer have kept me in touch with the club and even though I am nearly 500kms away, I still feel like a member of the club and I still contribute where I can. I used to be known as 'Impakt' on the forums but I've since changed my nick to 'slave'.

I have a half decent fleet of around 20 rockets ranging from the very small Estes 'Yankee' (18mm min dia) to the very big PML Ultimate Endeavour - I believe this is the biggest rocket west of NSW/Victoria. I have staged and clustered rockets, scratch builds and dual deployment birds. I am currently a Level 1 but hope to change that next year if I can get up to Perth and obtain an L impulse motor to launch the Ult. Endeavour. So far I have logged over 150 flights but I dont get to fly much down here because it's always windy - I am lucky to launch 10 rockets in a year now.

I work at the local Harvey Norman store as the in-house digital imaging specialist. My other hobbies include photography, especially astro and macro photography, astronomy and music. I play guitar/synth in a local metal band and produce all our music digitally.

So there yer go. I am not a figment of my imagination and now you have a face to go with the name/web site. Nosey bugger. ;-P

Your's truly representing PARC at the 2006 Albany Hobby Expo