Just a quick reminder, DART-SD just did a quick present at a local Cub Scout pack meeting. Cub Scouts, and the such are back in full swing now with school being back in. Not only is it a great way to promote rocketry as something the whole family can do together and maybe pick up some new members, it's a great time answering the question "how high does it go" a hundred times :), and showing the kids all kinds of different rockets.
If you haven't already, give the local club a call and set up a time to go down and do a short presentation. It's simple and easy, and you just might just make a big difference in a kids life to pursue the sciences in school. Also, since Hobby Lobby has kits at 1/2 price, take $10 and go get an Estes pack or a Quest pack to give away and you'll be guaranteed that you'll help create a lifelong lasting memory for one lucky kid.
A quick and easy way to add a little special "zing" to that meeting is to ask a couple of the boys to help you carry your stuff in to the meeting, and back out.
Boy, do they ever light up when they get to do it!
With the younger kids, we usually keep the presentation really basic. Give them a little background on the NAR, present the NARTREK program as something they can do through the club for a learning about rocketry while having fun and work for goals. Tell about the various contests of egg lofting, glider duration, etc., from there kinda work your way into addressing Mom and Dad about flying rockets too. A little background on motors sizes for different rockets and the NAR/Tripoli cert levels and just tie it in that everyone in the family can get into rocketry and have fun together, whether mom and dad want to just help their kids fly or get involved themselves at various levels.
Simple, straight forward, and lots of fun.
Our club sets up a screen and projector to put on a video, but that's only because it's my business, it's not necessary, just fun to listen to the kids oooo's and ahhhh's watching rocket videos.
As far as schools, I've done a couple, and it really depends on the grade level and their understanding of science. It's hard to judge where the level of understanding is and not talk over their heads, but mostly if you hit on TARC and what they can look forward too, talk about basic differences of BP as opposed to AP motors, and touch on safety issues...power lines, site dimensions, wind speed, weather cocking, most all will understand, course that's from a 5th grade level and up. Kids younger than that usually only understand "it goes really high, really fast!" :)
I have launched from pretty small parts with just crippled motor power. I believe the smallest city park we launched from must have been about half the size of a football field with no borders.
It can be done if you scale the rockets to the field. Also a big rocket with a small motor (ie 4" Estes V2 with D12-3 or Big Bertha with A8-3. Use the motivated people you generate to find a local field or farm to launch from. Or a college.
I gotta tell you, you're a great dad. Your kids (and their friends and fellow scouts) are really blessed to have someone who'll go to the extent you have for this badge. Kudos to you!
This question comes up all the time. If I stage two G008 so the combined burn time of my FAA exempt rocket exceeds 15 seconds, do I have to file for a $20,000, 3 year, 100# of paper "space permit"?
Why, thank you Doug! All in all, I really enjoy taking rocketry out to the kids. After all, it's going to be they who will have to set up the launcher, prep the rocket, and hand us the controller when we're in our wheelchairs! In the future, just because I can't run across the field the way I can now in order to retrieve a rocket, certainly doesn't mean I'm going to quit flying...
A neat thing happened awhile back. In August, I was asked to do my standard Powerpoint rocketry presentation and demo launch for a class of Head Start kids who were being taught by one of my kids' elementary school teachers. As usual, I didn't hesitate. Any excuse for me to skip work and fly rockets is always fine by me! Anyway, the kids ate it up, and I got several emails from a few parents asking about our club. Apparently, a few of the youngsters went home that day more fired up about rockets than Nintendo! Well, several weeks later, after school had started up, my older daughter handed me this beautiful book entitled "Milestones of Aviation" from the National Air and Space Museum. I kinda laughed and asked her if she'd checked that out of the library and she said, "No Dad, Mrs. Krupar told me to give this to you". I opened it up, saw a big "Thank You Mr. Hilty!" and on the first couple of blank pages were all the signatures and little messages from the kids in the Head Start class! I was floored! Most of the messages were the standard "Thank you for launching your rockets, Mr. Hilty", but one really stood out...
"Thank you Mr. Hilty for flying your Atles [sic]. When I become a astronaut and get my own rocket I will take you for a ride, sighned DJ"..
Know what? I met "DJ", and I think he just might pull that off (I hope! ;). D.J.'s Dad emailed me to tell me that he and D.J. are in the process of building a couple of Estes kits. He thanked me, and told me that he didn't realize how much fun the hobby had been for him and his son so far.
So anyway, in addition to what Boomer mentioned in the original post, get out there folks! It's a ball! In addition to the Scouting organizations, try out the school system! Share your knowledge, and enthusiasm with these kids, as they really are our hobby's, but more importantly, *our* future!
In many areas, especially town-ships, schools are self governing (run by the school board as the highest authority in the town) and can do pretty much what they choose on their own property. If you have buy-in from the school for a class, it is usually easy for the teacher to gain permission for a class related launch on their ball fields so long as you aren't interferring with a sporting event.
Go further and really insert yourself into the school science curiculum and you may be able to secure regular use of their fields along the way.
I know it's frustrating to not have a flying field. Not all angles and avenues work, but maybe this one would be worth a shot in your area.
About the comment about flying with kids being the best, I can attest to that! It is especially exciting to find one or two from your class who have done rocketry before and invite them to actually assist you with the class. They love it and (from my experience) others in the class aspire to learn so that they can help too. It's all great fun even if they don't *latch* onto the hobby.
By way of example, I used to hold the elected position of School Board member. One of my tasks was to officiate at graduation of outgoing seniors. During my first of many such graduations, the graduating class lined up to enter the gym. Their first task was to greet all the board members present. I was stunned when nearly every graduating senior got to me and greeted me as "Rocket Man" because at some point early in their school lives (4th, 5th or 6th grade) I had taught them a class or two on rocketry. Do they all do rockets? nope, but they sure remembered that day. Was one of the best days of my life. Especially the looks from my fellow board members! LOL
Jerry, it looks like you tagged your reply to the wrong thread. But while we are on the subject of launching on small school fields...
I noticed that the TARC altitude has been reduced from 1500 Ft. to
1250 Ft. due to field size concerns. Since only one rocket was not recovered at the national flyoff field, the constraint must have been an outcry from the teams in local test flying. Frankly, since the altitude was already low, and they had plenty or mass and impulse to spare, they could have just added an HPR like dual deploy system.
As it happens, since all the interest these days is in HPR, I had been thinking of posing new NAR MR contest events that would foster the development of HPR skills in young MR contest flyers. I was thinking of altitude spot landing, where the score would be altitude*(altitude/recovery distance from launcher). I would still be an altitude event but it would help develop flying skills of aiming for recovery in small fields, and encourage use of dual deployment systems.
I'm working on that Bob. I'll be happy to let anyone out in RMRland have a CD copy of it when the bugs are worked out. That, and I'll probably stick it on my website when I get *that* untangled.
I upgraded my Dell Inspiron from NT to Win2K Pro, and it tore the guts out of Powerpoint and all the rest of MS OfficePro. Funny that, you'd think an MS upgrade to an MS OS would be sensitive to any MS applications present and/or installed. Nope. What I'd like to do is burn the presentation with the free Powerpoint player so it'd be more, or less stand alone. One problem is that the Powerpoint player can't seem to handle animated GIF's which I use in several frames to illustrate Newton's Laws. It also tends to have "issues" with fullscreen video, which IMHO, is the _only_ way to present an Apollo liftoff!
Dunno. Windows media would run nicely, but the way I have it organized in Powerpoint, I can perform all sorts of "jumping", and "skipping" to different sections based on the age group I'm presenting to. If I'm running the presentation to a group of First Graders, I'll usually skip the portions regarding the fluid dynamics of the DeLaval nozzle, whereas if the class is 7th, 8th, or whatever, I'll usually cover that. It's also nice to be able to vary the presentation based upon the time constraints I have to deal with. Sometimes I get a couple of class-periods, sometimes I get 45 minutes. That functionality could be problematic in a strict Windows/Quicktime/Real type format.
I'm sure the kinks can be worked out. Once I get PP reinstalled, I should probably look for some SP's etc., for it, and the player.
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