Last year the cub scouts asked for volunteers to help with the Rocket Derby and since I'd had some experience with this I volunteered to help. It was a disaster, mainly because they didn't listen to my suggestions. 1st, they selected a field that was WAY too small - the ball field at an elementary school. 2nd, they launched the rockets from one corner of the field and by tilting the rods sent them out over the field. Both of these decisions resulted in about half of the rockets being lost in the trees surrounding the field, or on top of the school.
This year I decided to stay out of it because they didn't take my advice anyway, and they did the exact same thing. The only difference was that this year they only used smaller rockets for everyone and weren't launching anything on C motors, so most of the rockets were recovered.
However, on a table in the corner of the field they had two launch pads set up, and someone would be setting up one rocket while the other one was being launched... 4 feet away. On top of that, some dad who obviously had never seen a true CATO was taking pictures of every launch from about 2 feet away.
My wife and I were sitting with my son well away from the launch rods and I told her that sooner or later one of these engines was going to blow up on the rod, and those guys would be lucky if they weren't hurt. They also had the crowd sitting much too close and a couple of rockets nearly darted into someone's head.
I struggled with going over there and begging them to changing some things for safety, but after being ignored the previous year I knew it wouldn't matter. I'm glad nobody ended up getting hurt, I would have really felt horrible.
The bright side to all this, is that my son won a trophy. When we opened the package to start building it I decided I'd let him to 100% of the work. I'd be happy to show him how to do what he wanted to do, but he'd have to actually do the work. I suggested painting it to look like a pencil (similar to the Sky Writer) but he decided he wanted to make a light saber.
He had a toy light saber and brought it in to look at during the build. He painted the rocket blue and the bottom 1/4 (approx) silver, and used the fins painted black to emulate the grips on the handle. We then glued a red lego piece to be the button. I suggested adding a lot of other details, but he thought it was good enough, so after adding a couple of coats of clear coat he was done.
The launch was on Saturday morning and they judged all the rockets before launching any. Then on the next Tuesday, last night, there was a Pack meeting where they handed out the awards. His rocket came in 2nd place for the entire Pack, not just his Den!!!
This year I decided to stay out of it because they didn't take my advice anyway, and they did the exact same thing. The only difference was that this year they only used smaller rockets for everyone and weren't launching anything on C motors, so most of the rockets were recovered.
However, on a table in the corner of the field they had two launch pads set up, and someone would be setting up one rocket while the other one was being launched... 4 feet away. On top of that, some dad who obviously had never seen a true CATO was taking pictures of every launch from about 2 feet away.
My wife and I were sitting with my son well away from the launch rods and I told her that sooner or later one of these engines was going to blow up on the rod, and those guys would be lucky if they weren't hurt. They also had the crowd sitting much too close and a couple of rockets nearly darted into someone's head.
I struggled with going over there and begging them to changing some things for safety, but after being ignored the previous year I knew it wouldn't matter. I'm glad nobody ended up getting hurt, I would have really felt horrible.
The bright side to all this, is that my son won a trophy. When we opened the package to start building it I decided I'd let him to 100% of the work. I'd be happy to show him how to do what he wanted to do, but he'd have to actually do the work. I suggested painting it to look like a pencil (similar to the Sky Writer) but he decided he wanted to make a light saber.
He had a toy light saber and brought it in to look at during the build. He painted the rocket blue and the bottom 1/4 (approx) silver, and used the fins painted black to emulate the grips on the handle. We then glued a red lego piece to be the button. I suggested adding a lot of other details, but he thought it was good enough, so after adding a couple of coats of clear coat he was done.
The launch was on Saturday morning and they judged all the rockets before launching any. Then on the next Tuesday, last night, there was a Pack meeting where they handed out the awards. His rocket came in 2nd place for the entire Pack, not just his Den!!!
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