Beechwood Elementary School Kentucky Spring Rocketry Lesson

I have been approached by the wife of a friend, who is a teacher at the subject school in northern Kentucky, about teaching an estimated 30 - 40 students about rocketry. This would include building and flying simple LP rockets I would love to do something like this but have never taken on such a venture. Right now, all of the details are up in the air (timing, number of sessions, session length, rocket selection etc). Who out there has done something like this? What advise to you have? Most importantly.... Who would like to help? :wink:

Are you anywhere near Dayton, OH? You could swing by our Tuesday night build session and we could give you a lot of advice as our club does this several times a year. You might even pick up a volunteer or two.

We used to be TORC703, but for legal reasons we had to rename ourselves to Wright Stuff Rocketeers. We are still NAR section 703.

Find our club and meeting info here (check the Outreach page): https://www.torcrocketry.org/about-us.html

I'm in Cincinnati so that's not a far drive. I'll try to get up there next week. I should be able to make it by 6!

fyrfytr310 said:

I'm in Cincinnati so that's not a far drive. I'll try to get up there next week. I should be able to make it by 6!

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Mike, I'm in Ft. Thomas. What kind of help might you need? I do a fair amount of flying with TORC/WSR. Great club and equally great fields.

lol, saw the name and thought of the 'Beachwood 45789' song.
Rex

Fishhead said:

Mike, I'm in Ft. Thomas. What kind of help might you need? I do a fair amount of flying with TORC/WSR. Great club and equally great fields.

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I would be looking for any help offered. Whether it is the education (lecture if you will) piece, building and/or flying.

Are their any fields down your way that could be used for some low altitude, LP rocket?

Having done some school groups in the middle school range, I can recommend the Fliskits family of Jig-Tech rockets.The dooDad has basswood fins so is less delicate than the balsa finned Whatchamacallit and Thing-a-Ma-Jig. Also, the dooDad is minimum diameter so there is no motor mount sub-assembly to trip up a group of possibly inexperienced builders.

fyrfytr310 said:

I would be looking for any help offered. Whether it is the education (lecture if you will) piece, building and/or flying.

Are their any fields down your way that could be used for some low altitude, LP rocket?

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I'd be happy to help with the build/fly if my calendar allows it. Not sure if lecturing would be my bag. I fly at a baseball field at the top of our subdivision, but that would be a bit of a haul for kids from Ft. Mitchell. They have a soccer/multi-purpose field at the back of the campus that might work for small birds on A8-3s. It is quite close to I-75, which might not allow for anything bigger. The football field is turf, but I think this field is natural grass, so assuming it can be reserved, it might work out.

If you come to our next meeting you can talk to Randy about kits. In case you didn't know, the build session is at eRockets/Semroc which is owned by Randy. I know from past educational events that Randy isn't looking to make money on these kind of events. He supports these kind of things because it's good for the hobby, so don't feel like you need to buy the rockets from Randy.

Zeus-cat said:

If you come to our next meeting you can talk to Randy about kits. In case you didn't know, the build session is at eRockets/Semroc which is owned by Randy. I know from past educational events that Randy isn't looking to make money on these kind of events. He supports these kind of things because it's good for the hobby, so don't feel like you need to buy the rockets from Randy.

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Thanks Zeus-cat. I was able to talk to Randy and he provided some great insight!

Fishhead said:

I'd be happy to help with the build/fly if my calendar allows it. Not sure if lecturing would be my bag. I fly at a baseball field at the top of our subdivision, but that would be a bit of a haul for kids from Ft. Mitchell. They have a soccer/multi-purpose field at the back of the campus that might work for small birds on A8-3s. It is quite close to I-75, which might not allow for anything bigger. The football field is turf, but I think this field is natural grass, so assuming it can be reserved, it might work out.

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Fishhead, I'll send a PM.

Anyone else willing to volunteer, let me know as the school will require we do a simple background check. I am working on dates now.

I am trying to set this up so the teacher, Pam, can do the lecture material, based on what Randy (mentioned above) gave me and any volunteers and myself would handle the build/one-on-one questions

FYI the build'n fly went really well today. 33/34 chutes opened nicely and 30/34 were successfully recovered.

I learned quite a bit and look forward to doing it again!

Thanks for the help Fishhead!