About SoAR
Southern Area Rocketry has been serving North Georgia for twenty five years!
Who we are
Southern Area Rocketry (SoAR) is Section #571 of the National Association of Rocketry (NAR). SoAR’s membership is centered between the cities of Alpharetta and Johns Creek, GA, but is spread out over much of the north portion of the Atlanta Metro Area with members as far north as Elijay, as far south as Macon, as far west as Douglasville, and as far east as Athens.
Membership in SoAR is open to rocketry hobbyists of all ages. SoAR flies all types of model rockets from the traditional Estes-style to large amatuer rockets based on model rocket technology (known as High Power Rocketry).
All rockets are flown according to the safety codes of the NAR and of the Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA). These codes have allowed hundreds of millions of safe model rocket launches by hobbyists since the late 1950’s.
SoAR’s History
Southern Area Rocketry began simply enough in 1997. Three guys, an empty field, and the desire to bring together as many people as possible for a common interest. To fly rockets.
1997
Greg Burke had talked of his interest of rocketry to Tom Winterbottom and Joe Williams at work. Soon, they located a field near Cartersville, and with three Estes Porta-Pads, began flying rockets together.
While at the field one day, somebody brought up the idea of starting a club. A couple of slow days at work and the talk about starting a club continued. They soon agreed that they should form a NAR Section.
The first thing they had to figure out — a clever name. There were some interesting ideas. Rocketeers Against Sir Isaac Newton (RASIN). Rocketeers Against Gravity (RAG), and Southern Area Rocketry Association (SARA). SARA was the best one but that acronym was already being used by another section. The other two names seemed a bit negative. Other names were discussed but Southern Area Rocketry kept sticking in their minds. They abbreviated the name and SoAR was born.
The work then began. A sign up sheet was posted at Hobbytown in Kennesaw to see if there was really any interest from the public. After a couple of weeks there were about thirty names. Plans were made to have the first club launch, but wait! There was no sufficient launch system. Greg built the first launch system with help from Matt Cooper of Tripoli Atlanta. It would control eight model rocket pads. An Aerotech Mantis pad and Interlock controller would be used for models requiring a ¼” launch rod. Tom took care of the flyers that were handed out at Hobbytown and mailed to all of the names on the sign up sheet and every NAR member in North Georgia. The first launch was held the third Sunday of April 1997.
SoAR had a website from almost the day it was born, thanks to Doyle Tatum, and this site still gets traffic from old links to the original tripod.com site! It also had a newsletter thanks to Brad Van Dusen.
1998-2001
Soon SoAR started co-sponsoring high power launches with Tripoli Atlanta, and contests with another Georgia section, GAMMA, at a sod farm near Macon, as well as holding monthly launches in Euharlee, near Cartersville. In just over a year, SoAR was big enough with an active membership, that Greg decided to put in a bid to sponsor the NAR’s yearly non-competition sport launch. Amazingly, SoAR won the bid for the 1999 event and the club started planning for the event to be held at the large sod farm near Macon.
At almost the last minute, fearing the large crowds. the sod farm operator withdrew support for the event. SoAR turned to the HARA section in Huntsville, Alabama, for use of their field near Aardmore, AL and signed them on as a co-sponsor. The event was a very dusty success (thinking it would help, the land owner decided to till his field the week before the event!).
Meanwhile, back at Euharlee, the crowds kept growing and some rockets were hung on the transmission lines from the power plant, causing a lot of headaches, which meant the club was asked not to come back. And so we moved 40 miles to the south to Whitesburg. The crowds followed, and SoAR eventually lost that field. For awhile launches were held at McIntosh State Park on the Chattahoochee near Newnan, but the distance from most members and then the airspace shutdown caused by the 9/11 attacks sent the club searching again. A member offered his very large back yard near Bostwick, Georgia for awhile but again the distance to be traveled took its toll on membership numbers.
What the website looked like in 2001.
2002-2004
A sod farm was found near Braselton and SoAR was able to use that for a couple of years. The hunger for high power was solved by club trips to Orangeburg, SC, Manchester, TN, and GAMMA’s sod farm in Lilly, GA . Eventually, though, the Braselton field changed owners and the new owner didn’t feel comfortable with a few dozen people on his field once a month and SoAR was field-less. This was the low point of the club, as a rocket club needs a field, and regular launches, or else it starves.
2005-2006
A window of opportunity came when a large field next to the Garrard Landing park on the Chattahoochee became available off of Holcomb Bridge Road. Fulton County had bought part of the land to build a water treatment plant, but those plans were a few years away, and the park was managed by the city of Roswell. Jorge Blanco negotiated with Roswell for the occasional use of the park and the construction site next to it, and SoAR was in business again, It was obvious that this was a short term solution, as the signs of earth moving equipment and erosion fences started earlier than anticipated, but once again, Jorge came to the rescue, getting access to the athletic fields of Mill Springs Academy in Milton.
2007-2009
With a stable base of operations, a new period of growth for the club had begun. SoAR’s first launch at Mill Springs was in January of 2007 and the club has been conducting launches there ever since. SoAR partnered with the South Carolina clubs to host the NAR’s National Sport Launch in 2008, Another sod farm became available near Braselton/Hoschton and SoAR expanded to hold two launches per month: one local low power launch at Mill Springs, and one with a little higher power in Hoschton, and we continued a partnership with GAMMA for high power in Lilly/Unadilla, GA.
2010-2016
In 2010, a huge field with camping facilities near Calhoun was offered to SoAR and plans were made for a large regional high power launch named GRITS (for Georgia Rockets In The Sky), in April 2011. This marked the resurgence of sister club Tripoli Atlanta, which sponsored a day of experimental motor launches, while SoAR conducted two days of NAR high power at GRITS. Turnout was fantastic, but high winds and unusually cold weather marred the NAR part of the event. There were still some memorable flights, such as the first flight of Everett Stowe’s 1/25 scale Saturn V, Gary Dahlke’s big two stage rocket, and Burl Finkelstein’s perfect flight of a big rocket with a homemade M sized motor. The event was held there two more times before a land owner change, and the GRITS name was retired for awhile. We tried holding a few launches at the Atlanta Dragway in Commerce in the big parking lot, but problems with obstacles, access for recovery, launch site placement for high power, and looming development around the area (which are leading to the closing of the dragstrip this year) discouraged us from scheduling any more.
2017-Now
The last few yeats have seen SoAR members participating in Georgia’s film industry, providing rocketry expertise for AMC’s “Halt And Catch Fire” (that’s a computer term!), which featured rockets in the tenth episode of its fourth and last season in 2017; and assisted filming of a political ad that may or may not have aired in Alabama.
We’ve continued flying from Mill Springs, Dawsonville, and at the GRITS site near Tifton, while we’ve added occasional high power launches in Taylorsville, which is only two or three miles from SoAR’s original field.
We’ve continued our outreach with STEAM education groups, Scouts, and Civil Air Patrol and assisted both high school and college teams in The American Rocketry Contest and NASA’s Student Launch Initiative.