Grade School Rocketry Program

Well today was the big launch day. I will fill in more details and get some
pics posted later. We had 10 kids and had zero failures on the pads today!

Each kid prepped and launched their own rocket and all were recovered with
no damage.

We used Jim Flis' Whatchamacallit kit the jig tech worked very well with
the class room and limited build time. Anyone looking for a good starter
kit for 4th and 5th graders, this kit was spot on! BZ Jim.

Long story short we had 4 x 45 minute periods to build and fly the kits.

The first two sessions were used to build and assemble the rockets the
third session to paint them and the fourth was today to fly them.

Here are some related threads I have posted.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?t=9592

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?t=9771

Well here is a little more data, did not have time to get the pictures from
Jim, the other parent who has been helping me. Had to catch "Dinner" tonight
he got loose. Dinner is a 600 pound Hereford steer, my lovely wife is getting
into some serious organic farming as of late.

I purchased an Estes handheld clinometer; all I have to say is I am not
impressed by the quality of the unit or its accuracy, even when used by an
adult especially for what they charge. But most of the variability is in the
operator and we had the kids do most of the measuring. By eye all the
rockets were between 70-90 feet and the low numbers can be atributed to
measurement errors. But the kids had a blast and learned something and
that is what really matters! Attached is a spread sheet with the kids
altitudes. We flew on 1/4A3-3T's, they are slightly underpowered for the
Whatchamacallit we had a few that did not deploy until within ~20 feet of
the ground. But even with moderate winds in the 10-15 mph range they all
landed within 40' of our pads.

After school Jim and I and our sons launched a few more times and
got the data on the 1/2A3's and A10's. Next year I will use 1/2A3 the rockets
flew much better and deployment was near the apogee, and even in todays
winds landed withing 50-70 feet of the pads. The A10's flew great but had
significant down range travel and of the three launchs on A10's all landed
near the road a good 300' down range.

View attachment Friday Academy.xls

Congrats! Sounds like everyone had a great time

Shade said:

Well here is a little more data, did not have time to get the pictures from
Jim, the other parent who has been helping me. Had to catch "Dinner" tonight
he got loose. Dinner is a 600 pound Hereford steer, my lovely wife is getting
into some serious organic farming as of late.

Click to expand...

It's always something, isn't it? My husband works in the ag field and late one night we got a call to see if he could offer any advice in capturing fugitive ostriches.

It sounds like you gave the kids a really postive experience, and I bet you had fun as well.

You might be interested in reading and/or contributing to EMRR's reviews. You probably already are aware of it but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
https://www.rocketreviews.com/

Pippen said:

It's always something, isn't it? My husband works in the ag field and late one night we got a call to see if he could offer any advice in capturing fugitive ostriches.

Click to expand...

Ostriches can be very mean... but they are tasty!

Pippen said:

You might be interested in reading and/or contributing to EMRR's reviews. You probably already are aware of it but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
https://www.rocketreviews.com/

Click to expand...

Review submitted.

All I have to say is Jim's kit exceed all my expectations! The Jig-Tech fins
are idea for first time kid builders with limited time.

I have some spare parts I do plan on building a tumble recovery version of
this rocket.

Some pictures.

Glad this rocket worked out for you. We have had great success with this and the Thing-a-ma-Jig all around the country!

Love the pix. All of the kids seemed to be having a great time

I have to get my B&GC rocket launch pix up. We had some great flights this past week!

Update 2011 Class:

This year was the second year for the Rocketry Unit with the Friday
Academy program. Once again we flew the Whatchamacallit from
Mr. Flis. Again very successful. Here are a few pictures of this year's
work.

Very kewl! Keep up the good work! We (rocketeers) get more of these educational build groups going and this hobby will be just fine!