Welcome!
The Northern Illinois Rocketry Association (NIRA) has been bringing rocket hobbyists together in northeastern Illinois, mainly suburban Chicago, since 1963. Our members participate in regular monthly meetings and club launches plus a variety of special activities throughout the year. We range in age from toddler through elderly, and include beginners, dedicated hobbyists with over 35 years of hobby rocketry experience, and a variety of folks in between. Whatever your sport rocket interests or skill level, you'll find a welcome home at NIRA.Fly Your Whole Collection
NIRA members build and fly model and high power rockets, competition models, radio controlled rocket gliders, scale models and oddrocs of all sizes, shapes and description. Visit our Photo Galleries to see some of the rockets we fly and photos from some of our launch events and meetings.Pick Up New Ideas
NIRA members regularly share their latest discoveries through presentations at club meetings, discussion at after-meeting dinners, email lists, and local, national, and international convocations. Are you looking for answers on how to best apply that special paint? Need some pointers on fiberglass techniques? Want to know how to trim your helicopter rocket? Check out the action at a NIRA event. Ask some questions. You'll get hooked up in no time.Share Your Ideas
You may have some hobby techniques of your own or other special knowledge that you'd like to share with the club. The floor is always open at NIRA meetings for members to help each other out with tips and tricks. Additionally, many members attend national conventions like NAR's NARCON. NIRA holds our own annual convention in February, called NIRACon.Open To Anyone
You may have flown rockets as a kid. You may be discovering rockets for the first time. You may not even own any rockets, but are just interested in the science. NIRA welcomes anyone interested in sport rocketry to join us.
To join our club, simply print and mail in a membership application.
For more information you can email us at information, or if you prefer you can contact someone on our contact list to get information on a specific topic. We look forward to seeing you and talking rockets!
Club History
Our club was founded in 1963 as the "Glen Ellyn Rocket Society" (GERS) by Scott Godron of the Glen Ellyn Toy & Card shop (retired from Amoco). Meetings were held at the Glen Ellyn Civic Center. Dues were 25 cents per month.
The club's main annual event was a Labor Day launch held at South Park (now Newton Park). Regular club launches were held at North Park (now Ackerman Park).
Someime during the late 60s or early 70s the 67 existing NAR sections were alphabetized and assigned numbers from 101-167. GERS was designated section #117. GERS/NIRA has been continuously chartered since 1963, making it one of the oldest NAR sections in the country. No one really knows who the oldest is. Only a handful of those original clubs remain, and some of them have gaps in their history.
In 1975 GERS hosted a regional contest at Fermilab.
Name Change
The club name was changed in 1976 to attract members outside the Glen Ellyn area. The new name: Northern Illinois Rocketry Association. That's how our number got out of alpha order with the remaining "original" sections.
In 1979 the club newsletter, The Leading Edge, was resurrected under Ric Gaff with assistance from Mark Bundick, Bob Kaplow, and others. The Leading Edge went on to win six North American Rockwell trophies under four different editors.
NIRA Dominates Competitions
NIRA dominated national competitions as the National Champion section in 1985, 1986, and 1987, and reserve champion in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1988. NIRA hosted NARAM-28 and NARAM-33. Several members were national champions during that period.
In 1991, along with NARAM-33, NIRA hosted NAR's first ever HPR launch under ORDs controlled airspace. We received a waiver to 1,700', which allowed us to fly big, draggy rockets that don't go very high. The largest rocket flown was a LOC Bruiser on a K550 motor.
During the 1990s NIRA hosted MRFF sport launches, with almost 1,000 launches over 2 days.
New Field, New Meeting Space
During the 90s NIRA lost both its original flying field, and its original meeting space. The club end up as nomads for several years before finding a home with the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.
"Watch the Grass Grow" began during this timeframe at the Harvard sod farm, and eventually moved to the Richard Bong State Recreation Area in Wisconsin. The event is now run by Wisconsin Organization Of Spacemodeling Hobbyists (WOOSH). NIRA received the first ever HPR waiver for Bong. Both WOOSH and Fox Valley Rocketeers (FVR) have spun off from NIRA as club members outside the DuPage County area reached critical mass and organized their own clubs.