The National Association of Rocketry’s annual convention comes to the Space Coast in 2019.
JonRocket.com will be onhand with a selection of our products on display and for sale in the vendor room. The Vendor Room will be open to attendees and the general public from 8:00am to 6:30pm on Saturday March 2.
Registration is required to attend NARCON events, but is not required to visit the Vendor Room.
For more information about the convention, please visit the NARCON 2019 web page.
NARCON 2018 will be held February 23 through 25, 2018, in Houston, Texas. JonRocket.com will be there as a vendor.
NARCON is the National Association of Rocketry’s annual convention. The three-day event features guest speakers, technical presentations, and a banquet on Saturday night. A special feature for the 2018 convention is the option to tour Space Center Houston with rocketry enthusiast and aerospace historiography, John Pursley. Pursley will lead a very special “walk-around” tour of the Saturn V on display at the Johnson Space Center, highlighting elements of the multi-year conservation project in which he participated.
JonRocket.com has made a donation to the National Space Club Florida Committee to help support their Space Week educational outreach in Brevard County along Florida’s Space Coast.
Space Week actually lasts several weeks. During this time, every sixth grader in the county’s public schools is able to spend a day at Kennedy Space Center and engage in a number of space-related activities.
In 2016, more than 6500 students participated in the Space Week program.
For more information, please visit the NSCFL website at https://www.nscfl.org/spaceweek.
Moving is exciting. Moving is challenging. Moving is a lot of work And, as we are demonstrating, moving is time-consuming!
We are still working hard to get JonRocket.com back on line. We have all of our inventory in our new office. Most of it is unpacked and sorted. We still have some things to unpack.
We are also continuing to move furniture and fixtures into the office. Almost all of the furniture and fixtures are new (or, at least, new to us). Some arrived in big cartons with assembly instructions spelled out in hieroglyphics.
The office now has internet service and we are starting to set up the computers and printers that we use to process orders.
We started to “flip the switch” to enable the online store this weekend (March 4-5). But, realized that we weren’t quite ready and trying to process orders while still setting up the office was not really a good idea. Bracha and I apologize for how long it is taking, but we have decided to continue to take our time and do things right.
We are currently in the process of moving JonRocket.com to a new location.
We will have more room to stock a larger selection of rocketry kits, supplies, accessories, and motors.
During the move, we are closing our online store. Once the move is completed, we’ll be back!
We understand that this is not the best time, but a combination of circumstances has forced us to close our store temporarily during the move. We had hoped to be back in business in time to support your holiday shopping, but the move is taking longer than expected.
We are now estimating that our store will be back online around the end of February.
Thanks to every one of our customers and friends for your support since we started running JonRocket.com over seven years ago. We look forward to serving the rocketry community for many years to come!
We try to attend each of ROCK’s monthly launches in Oviedo, Florida. At this month’s launch was a reporter, Caitlin Dineen, from the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. She interviewed several of the launch participants including our club’s president, Brian Coyle.
Jordan Krumbine, the Sentinel photographer, took photos of people prepping rockets for flight, launching rockets, and watching the flights. Carl Campbell, of Real Space Rockets is featured in one of the photographs.
Later the same day, Dineen’s artice, titled “Rocket Enthusiasts Find Great Heights,” appeared in the Space News section of the Sentinel’s web site. The article includes a gallery of the photographs taken by Krumbine.
The Students for the Exploration and Development of Space at the University of Central Florida (SEDS-UCF) have created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to support their participation in NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) competition.
JonRocket.com is happy to support SEDS-UCF. We have been impressed with their accomplishments so far and know that they will do well in the future.
For almost a decade, JonRocket.com has supported the National Association of Rocketry’s NARTREK Cadet program.
The NARTREK Cadet program is designed specifically for modelers under age 18 and is open to both members and non-members of the NAR.
The NARTREK Cadet program consists of a series of four achievement levels in rocketry. Each level requires more skill to complete than the previous level. As each level is finished, the NAR will send you an Achievement Certificate and an enameled pin certifying your accomplishment. You are under no time limit. You progress at your own pace.
For information on the NARTREK Cadet program, please visit the National Association of Rocketry’s web site:
In addition to the certificate and pin awarded by NAR, we are offering a FREE ROCKET KIT (of our choice) to each child that completes a level of the NARTREK Cadet program.
When you (or your child) completes a level of the Cadet program send a copy of the certificate to us at sales@jonrocket.com. You can scan the certificate or send a digital photograph of it. If you wish, you can also include a photo or two for us to include in our blog. Please include the child’s name, the NARTREK Cadet level completed, and your shipping address.
Fine Print: This offer is only available to new Cadet program participants. Certificates must be dated June 1, 2013, or later. The participant must be 18 years of age or younger. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Estes has announced a price increase effective April 1st. The list price for about a dozen of their products will increase. The affected products include the No. 2 Skywriter, Alpha bulk set, and their plastic parachutes.
We’ve updated the “MSRP” for the products on our site, but have kept our discounted prices the same for now. Our prices will be adjusted at the beginning of April as we restock the items.
We had a fun time at the National Association of Rocketry’s 2014 Convention, NARCON, in Cocoa Beach.
Our room had a wonderful view of the beach and ocean, but the event kept us so busy that we had little time to stay in the room.
We covered four tables in the vendor room with an assortment of rocketry products.
We had the pleasure of meeting many interesting people including Vern and Gleda Estes.
We introduced a couple of new products which will be available from JonRocket.com soon.
Designed by Chris Michielsson, the Pigasus is a new kit from Odd’l Rockets.
Chris also designed the new plastic parachutes for JonRocket.com.
The plastic sheet is part of a parachute kit which can be used to make a 12″, 15″, or 18″ parachute.
Bracha and I had a wonderful time at NARCON. We would like to thank and congratulate the organizers for bringing a world-class event to Central Florida!
Carl McLawhorn started Semroc Astronautics in 1967 in his college dorm room. Today Semroc manufactures many of the model rocket kits we sell including replicas of classic designs from Estes Rockets, Centuri, and others. Carl died earlier this year, but his wife Sheryl, and son Bruce, along with other members of the family, continue to operate the company to the high standard set by Carl.
Unfortunately, the McLawhorn family has once again been hit by tragedy as Bruce is in the hospital in serious condition. His prognosis for recovery is good and we wish him a speedy recovery.
In the mean time, Semroc’s web site is off-line due to an issue with the domain name registration. The problem should be resolved soon.
In order not to burden the family during this time, we are not placing any restock orders with Semroc. But, we have every reason to believe that Bruce will be okay and that Sheryl and Semroc will be back as strong as ever.
If you wish to make a contribution to help Bruce and his family with their medical bills and other expenses, you may send a donation through PayPal to Semroc’s email address, sales@semroc.com. Sheryl will forward the money to the family’s church which is administering a fund to support Bruce’s family.