WOOSH Volunteers Help with Kids' Rocketry Classes

at the Discovery World Museum and Alverno College

by Dr. Paul C. Smith

The Classes

Last summer WOOSH members Pavel and Tom Pinkas helped to teach a rocketry class for kids at the Discovery World Museum in Milwaukee. The Pinkas team (otherwise known as CHEDAR-1) helped the kids make streamer duration models out of vellum. At the end of a week, a group of WOOSH volunteers met the kids out at the Bong Recreation Area to help them to launch their rockets, and to put on a display of some rockets of our own.

I also discovered that year that a local teacher (Ellen Mazurek) had decided to run a rocketry class in the College for Kids program at my own institution, Alverno College, also in Milwaukee. I got in touch with her, and volunteered to help out with a classroom presentation and help on their own launch, which was held at Alverno College the day after the Discovery World launch at Bong.

We had the opportunity this year to repeat our involvement in both programs. Pavel was unavailable, and so the Discovery World class was more conventional, with Mark Picard of Discovery World helping the kids to build Alpha III rockets. I did manage to get to the Museum on Tuesday the 18^th of June, toting a box full of rockets. The class was in the Quad Lab working on 2 liter water bottle rockets - they were supposed to be duct-taping cardboard fins and paper nose cones to the things, but progress was very slow. There were about 14 kids, Mark (the instructor), and two teen-aged volunteer helpers. They had not yet started building their model rockets. Mark introduced me as a rocket expert from a Milwaukee club. I showed them several rockets - an Apogee Heliroc, my Ranger clone, and an Aerotech Initiator, as well as a 4" nose cone and the partly completed payload bay I'm building. I gave them a little talk about the Ranger ("not very different from the rockets you're building, except that it uses three engines"). Then I explained the Heliroc, and talked about contests (spot landing, duration events, altitude events, scale models). Of course, what they wanted to see and talk about was the larger rockets, so I pulled apart the Initiator, and again explained that it is really not very different from the rockets they will build and fly. I also explained dual deployment and showed them the payload bay (with an RRC2 attached). Of course I promised them that they'd see some of the larger ones fly at the launch at Bong.
I invited the kids to the next club launch and to ECOF, and gave them the dates. Mark said that he had something in print to give them (I hadn't had the chance to run copies of my stuff yet). I did show them a copy of Sport Rocketry (with Chuck Nozika's M-powered flight at Bong on the cover) as well as the new Member Guidebook.

The next day I did two presentations at the Alverno College for Kids Rocketry classes. There was a morning class for beginners, with roughly 10-12 kids building Wizards as well as Whitewings gliders and small water bottle rockets. The Wizards were almost done when I showed up - the fins were all on, but were VERY crooked, and I expected a very interesting launch. The kids had done a very nice job of decorating their rockets, though, including this patriotic design:

A Patriotic Wizard.

My presentation was roughly the same as at Discovery World, though this time I did have the handout ready, with the website URL and a little calendar of upcoming events. They hadn't talked about how engines work yet, so I did a little thing on that, and showed them the parts of a G64 reload, as well as a AT SU F25-6 and some A8-3s. I wish I'd thought to bring a collection of different sized motors - I did that last year, and it worked well. I did show them Sport Rocketry and the Member Handbook, just like at DW.

The kids had some good questions about parachutes and streamers, and two-stagers and the like, but of course, it quickly degenerated into "do they ever explode?" and "wouldn't it be cool if you could hit an airplane?" I try to head that off by telling them to come down and see a high power launch and they'll see stuff that's a lot cooler than that. Still... But, I suppose I'd probably have been asking the same questions at that age (and let's face it...we did just all ooh and aah over a CATO photograph on our mailing list <grin>).

The afternoon class at Alverno was a small section of seven kids who took the first class last summer. That's a pretty good record - there were about 20 kids last year, and they were clamoring for an advanced class, and seven of them actually showed up to do it. They all remembered me from last year, and were all excited about how that launch had gone. The kid who convinced me to let him launch his Maniac on a D12 from our little parking lot was back again, as was the kid who convinced me that the foam Shuttle was okay.

Those kids were building a larger kit with a lot of fins. It's called the "Nemesis". The three fins at the back are not all the same - there's a pair of identical "wings" and a "vertical stablizer" (it's supposed to look like a fighter plane-style spaceship, with a bubble canopy on the nose cone). All three of those fins are two-part, which means they have to glue them together straight on a piece of waxed paper before attaching them to the rocket. That was a bit of a challenge for them. The blurb in the Estes catalog says "One of the most feared spaceships in the galaxy!" I'd say that's pretty accurate... Still, putting together those fins is good practice for them in preparation for building Orbital Transports when they're re-released this fall...


An artistically decorated Nemesis.

The Launches

Despite a lot of iffy weather during the week and some gloomy predictions, we managed to launch with Discovery World on schedule, Thursday, the 20^th of June. The winds were high, and it was hot and sunny, but we had a completely successful launch. There were very few misfires. Like last year, we had a heatstroke incident, this time with one of the young women assisting Mark with Discovery World. She was fine by the time we left, but got to the point of nausea while we were there.

Each of the kids got to fly his Alpha III at least twice, and some three times, and we got 'em all back (though some not until an hour later, while others were searching for their rockets out in the prairie).

Brian helps load a rocket.

Brent Lillesand, Brian Cieslak, Fred Jarosch, Mark Stehlik and I all flew some demonstration flights and helped kids to load and launch their rockets. I believe that we got all of ours back as well, and all in one piece to boot. I flew my CC Express (C11-0/C11-7), my Initiator (F25-6), and my Archer (H97 short), all perfect flights. Brent and Fred also flew some high power flights, and Mark showed them interesting flights of an Edmonds rocket glider and an Estes saucer.

Fred and a couple of happy youngsters.

Darlene Jarosch and Mark Picard install engines while Fred helps track a flight.

The Alverno launches went every bit as well. Despite the black skies and morning thunderstorms, the morning class at Alverno had wonderful weather and a successful launch. The Wizards corkscrewed their way up just fine, and while most of them kicked the motors, most of them also deployed streamers, and all of them were recovered.

The afternoon launch went off fine as well. There were only seven kids, each launching his or her Nemesis once on an A8-3. The kids from the Alverno Day Care Center and their teachers had heard the morning launch, and came out to sit under a tree and watch this launch, chanting "rockets! rockets! rockets!". All of the kids' flights except one went well - one kid's rocket hung on the rod. They reloaded and launched it the right way. Just as in the morning, lots of parents showed up, and I handed out almost all of the cards that Brent had made up announcing the next sod farm launch and ECOF.

Ellen Mazurek explains the launch procedures.

I flew three demonstration flights. The first was my Apogee Helicopter - the burn string didn't release the blades, and it just tumbled down (no damage). The second was my "Apogee III" (BT-50 sized Apogee II), using a B6-0 booster and an A8-3 sustainer. Nice high dramatic flight, but the upper stage hung up in a tree. My third flight was my beaten up Orbital Transport clone, on a B6-4, a perfect flight, except that the glider REALLY stalls. The kids loved 'em all.

A couple of happy soon-to-be-rocketeers.

One of the kids in the morning class had been in the Discovery World class last year. He wanted to do that class again, but they didn't offer it to his age group. His mother remembered me from the launch, and had some really good things to say about Pavel and the launch last year. The kid really lit up when we talked about that class and launch - Pavel and the WOOSH folks obviously did something right last year. WOOSH can be proud of its involvement with these kids' groups.