Cool breeze, sunny days, kids and rocketry.

The Greater Nashua Boys & Girls Club has endorsed model rocketry in a big way.  This Merrimack, NH class was my 6th to date over the past year.  Each class is 6-7 weeks long with up to 22 students per class.

A typical class out line includes an introduction to model rocketry followed by 2 weeks of model building.  The 3rd week is our first launch.   This is followed by a lecture session where they learn more about model rocketry and the science behind rocketry (stability, motor operation, use of tools and design considerations).  This is followed by a second 2 week build and a launch on the last week.

After doing several beginner classes it was discovered that many of these kids wanted to do more so I started offering intermediate classes as well.   These classes would build Skill Level 2 and 3 kits and in one case involved them designing and building their own rocket.

This most recent class (March/April 2006) was truly unique.   I had 14 students, 6 of them beginners and 8 intermediate kids.  I defined "Intermediate" as those kids who had previously had one of my classes.  I knew it was going to be challenging running two different skill groups concurrently, but in the end it worked out fine.

The beginner class built the Triskelion and our new (yet to be announced) Thing-a-ma-Jig kit, while the intermediate kids built the Long OverDue and the Corona.

The results were incredible!  These kids did fantastic and the intermediate kids rose to the challenge of doing a great deal of work on their own knowing that I had to spend more time with the beginning kids.  We wound up with 28 rockets that flew and flew well.  We lost a few, we dinged a few, but everyone learned something and everyone had a great time.

I was very pleased as I used this group as a test case for the new Thing-a-ma-Jig kit.  I was really concerned as I was running two classes concurrently AND this session was only 6 weeks so there would only be one build session with this kit.  I was very gratified to see these beginners construct the Thing-a-ma-Jig, start to finish, in one class session (90 minutes).  I am convinced that this kit could be constructed in under an hour if I were able to devote my entire attention to this one group.

Not bad for an all-balsa kit.

On the left you will find thumbnail images of our adventures in rocketry.  Click on a thumbnail to bring up a full size image here.

Enjoy!