Our next scheduled launch will be in conjunction with a building session that is scheduled with the Kendall County 4H group on April 29th. Please see our home page for additional details.

Please call us if you are not a member but would like to launch with us. We like when we have visitors.

You can launch with us for the first time at no charge. You can launch with us for a second time for a $5 fee. After that you would need to join our club in order to continue launching with us. In any event, spectators are always free. So feel free to come on out and join us even if you have nothing to launch.

If you are an organized club such as a Scout group or TARC team then please give us a call. We make special arrangements for organized groups in order to provide an inexpensive launch experience while still helping to cover our costs. We are aware of the need for launch sites in the spring for TARC teams needing to make a qualified flight, so please contact us if you need conduct an observed launch for TARC qualification purposes.

We are a small club and are still in the process of scheduling future launch dates throughout the year. We plan on having a more organized monthly launch schedule in the late summer. Please contact us for more information.

We have the ability to launch at the East Branch Forest Preserve in Glendale Heights as well as at a private farm in Oswego. 4H launches are held in a variety of different settings.

East Branch Forest Preserve

Getting to the Glen Ellyn site
The main entrance is on Glen Ellyn Road one-quarter mile south of Army Trail Road approximately two miles north of North Avenue (Route 64).

Getting to the Oswego site
The farm that we use is a private farm and the owner would prefer that we not publish the location. We'll provide the information to anyone needing to be at a launch. This site is quite large and provides a very nice location for rocket enthusiasts located in the western suburbs.

Flights cards
Here's a PDF version of our flights cards. This link will open up a PDF document with editable form fields. You can simply type whatever information you need into the fields then print multiple copies of the form. The flight card is 4" x 6" and can be printed on index cards or plain paper. If you print on plain paper you'll need to be sure to turn Page Scaling to None in the print dialog box in Acrobat. This will print the flight card at the upper left of your paper and will print a light box around your flight card that indicates where to cut with a scissors. You can also save a version of this document to your own computer so that you can print out customized flight cards whenever you need them.

What are the limitations at these sites?
We can launch rockets that weigh up to up to 3.3 lbs. That covers the range of model rockets from low power to mid-power. We are pretty much set up so that you can enjoy anything that would be considered mid-power rocketry. Anything heavier than 3.3 lbs. or any rocket that contains more than 125grams total of propellant falls into the high power category and requires a special waiver from the FAA. We are not set up to do the waiver work at this time. Once our club gets larger and has a number of high powered flyers then it would be worth our effort to complete the waiver process. Some of our members occasionally travel just north of the border into Wisconsin to fly high powered rockets with our friends from the WOOSH rocket club.

Also, we have a ceiling of 1,900 feet AGL that we cannot penetrate at the Glen Ellyn field. If you have any rockets that are going to achieve an altitude to close to that then we ask that you provide us with some sort of evidence that your rocket will stay below that ceiling. This can either be computer simulation printouts or altimeter evidence from prior flights. We are launching near an approach path to O'Hare Airport and are also under a Terminal Control Area, so we make a special effort to stay friendly with the FAA.