OREM, Utah USA — When it rains, it pours. At least that seems to be how reality doles out fate to those already on the short end of the volunteering stick. And it has certainly been pouring for Bruce Kelly, editor and publisher of High Power Rocketry magazine, the longest running hobby rocketry magazine aimed at the high power enthusiast, as well as President of Tripoli Rocketry Association.

As if Kelly didn't have enough to tend to with running the Tripoli Rocketry Association, he has been forced to spend a lot of time recently riding herd on the joint litigation with the National Association of Rocketry against the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The first three months of 2000 were spent dealing with that case as well as dealing with the FAA's attempt to 'reinvent hobby rocketry' and the Bureau of Land Management trying to put a lid, virtually, on the Black Rock desert launch site and other federal lands. These things alone would be enough headaches for most people, but Bruce is a tenacious person and has seen a lot worse.

"Imagine, if you will, sitting down to finalize the current edition of HPR and getting an error message from your computer's disk drive," Kelly said in a telephone interview. "Fortunately, the hard drive was partitioned off and the drive space where this edition of the magazine was stored was still salvageable. And, the hard drive had exactly 10 days of warranty left when it failed." He went on to tell about installing the replacement drive sent from the manufacturer, which turned out to be defective as well. The third time was the charm, or so it appeared.

Next came incompatibilities with printer and scanner drivers interacting with Windows 2000, which eventually led to the replacement of the scanner completely due to a manufacturer refusing to upgrade the scanner's drivers, and you have a recipe for a migraine.

Kelly has managed to plod forward and foresees a magazine mailing the first week of May, a testament to his tenaciousness. Sometimes we on the outside don't realize how much goes on behind the scenes in volunteer positions, but hopefully at least we appreciate the hard work that materializes into industry information in print.