What you can do if you only have 45 minutes with a group...

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BEC

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Yesterday I participated in an event at a Boys & Girls Club in south Tacoma, Washington as part of Boeing's annual "Global Day of Service". While many of the events were helping with weeding, painting or such, at this particular event we got to spend a little time with kids and airplanes and rockets.

The structure of the event, though, led to really, really short sessions from a rocket standpoint - I had about 45 minutes to go from "here's what a model rocket is" to holding a contest of sorts.

We flew Estes SkyTrax RTF rockets (that I had already gotten truly ready to fly in advance) in a sort of spot landing contest. Then we took the top two finishers from each of the two groups and had a "flyoff".

In each session we divided the kids into groups of three. Then each group member was given a different job. We had a "recovery specialist" who packed the wadding and 'chute and retrieved after the flight, a "propulsion specialist" who installed the motor (B6-4 with igniter preinstalled by me) and connected the launch control system up and the LCO who set the launch angle for the contest and did the countdown and launch. At the start of each of the first two flying rounds I flew my SkyTrax to give the kids an idea what it would look like, then let them go readjust launch angles if desired.

So it was a very brief introduction, but since few of the kids had ever seen a model rocket before, never mind flown one, we still had lots of smiles and "oohs" and "where is it?" and such. The best part was the enthusiasm showed by a number of the girls in the second group. One trio of girls won their round and the overall spot landing contest and took home Estes Rascal/HiJinks launch sets (and some of the motors from the educator box we used for the event) as their prize. And one of the boys told me as he was leaving that it was "the best day of the summer".

Here are some pictures posted (hopefully publicly) of the event as a whole. I'm the guy in the blue chambray shirt (and in the Tilley hat when we're outdoors) in case anyone cares....:)

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150275031154241.341318.109738714240

Pictures from lunch, the airplane sessions and the closing event are also mixed in to the set - it isn't all just the rocket bit.

The SkyTrax turned out to be a good choice for the field and conditions - even though they were sent to the club by mistake (we ordered Athenas). Enough performance to get to 250 feet or so on the B motors but heavy enough to stay on the field and be pretty easy to follow in flight. So it was a fortunate error.
 
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Good job Bernard. I was going to sign up for that event but volunteers were already filled.
 
Bernard,

GREAT JOB! Yeah, 45 min isn't much time, that's for sure. But it looks as though you took good advantage of what you had.

It's also nice to see that the kids got a lot of hands-on experience too. All too often, with very short venues, the leaders tend to "do it all" as it saves time. But it saves time at the expense of real experience...

very nice :)
jim
 
Thanks, Jim, Andy, John. Coming from you, Jim - knowing how much outreach you do - that means a lot!

You'll also be amused to know that on Pad 3 of the third rack full of rockets I put my Frick'n'Frack (loaded C6-0 to B6-0). I got a bunch of "what is that?" questions to which I replied "You'll see". I then explained as briefly as I could that we could do two stages with model rockets, the flew it. It was a nice flight with lots of "ooh" and "aahs" and smiles and giggles, too.
 
You gotta love the Frick-n-Frack as a demo rocket :) Other great demo models include the Decaffeinator, UFFO and, now, the Trifecta!

Low, slow and lots of noise! :)

This weekend I'm going to check out the Frick-n-Frack on A8 motors :D
 
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