Kids with rockets, boats, glue, paint, sun and fun!

The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua has invited me to run another program with their Merrimack After School program. This time with a twist, however!

Due to my involvement in cardboard boat racing, they thought it would  be interesting to run the first half of this class with rocketry, as with my other classes.  BUT, the second half would be devoted to building and paddling a cardboard boat!

What a challenge!  I have been involved in helping run the Merrimack Public Library Cardboard Boat races for the past several years and even have my share of trophies for my efforts in building.  Each year, about 2 months before the September event, I hold a public class at the library to teach folks some of the basics of cardboard boat building.  Yes, if you are asking the question, these are FULL SIZE boats made entirely of corrugated cardboard that people get INTO and paddle around a course laid out in the lake.  The largest that I have ever built was a 14 foot working side-paddle river boat called the Merrimack Belle, large enough to hold a half dozen adults!  You can find out more about my involvement in these races on my personal site here.

To further add interest and challenge, the rocketry part of the class was going to be a mix of beginners and intermediate rocketeers again!  For this session, the beginners built the soon to be announced Thing-a-ma-Jig kit while the intermediate students built the Tri-Glide.

The main feature of the Thing-a-ma-Jig is that it comes with a neat set of laser cut fins that are so designed that you assemble them into a "fin-unit" in just a couple of minutes that can stand alone and dry without the fins falling apart and when dry are assured of being perfectly straight.   Perfect for a class of beginners to the hobby of model rocketry.  The main challenge for the intermediate kids with the Tri-Glide was building something totally outside their experience range.  It was going to be interesting to be sure.

However, everything has gone perfect with this class so far!   We have completed 5 of the 6 weeks as of this writing.  We have built and flown Thing-a-ma-Jig kits and Tri-Glide kits with outstanding success (great job kids!) and we have also built and painted our boats.  Later this week I meet the kids and the boats down at the lake where we will run a race for fastest time!  Good luck to all!  I will add on to this album after the races!

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!