[roc-chat] Re: My Response: Youth Groups, TARC, and CAP

  • From: "Adrian P. Bailey" <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 13:22:19 -0700

Now I know what to do with the Hot Wheels sets my son seems to have grown
out of, LOL…

This is a great post. My 10yo son, Max, is absolutely convinced he will be a
rocket scientist and/or astronaut one day. My background is software
engineering (not rockets) so I searched long and hard to find places not too
far from Santa Monica where could learn about and launch model rockets.
Thank you to Greg for introducing me to ROC.

Seeing the large rockets launch at the last couple of ROC events was
tremendously inspiring but we likely wouldn’t have attended (or it would
have been less of a priority) if Max hadn’t been able to fly his own small
models. We would probably have stayed closer to home (e.g. SCRA). My two
experiences so far have been that the ROC people are much more welcoming to
newbies … ;)

p.s. I just read your other post. We went to the lakebed on our own the
Sunday after the ROC launch this month. I called the BLM rangers and they
said groups of up to five people can launch small model rockets without a
permit. They don’t seem to have any detailed rules (except the ones about
flights being suborbital, unmanned, and not launched into foreign
territories – hilarious)!

From: roc-chat-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:roc-chat-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike & Nancy Kramer
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2014 1:01 PM
To: roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [roc-chat] Re: My Response: Youth Groups, TARC, and CAP

 

So, I have been waiting to see how the chat was going and decided to weigh
in.

I really think that nylon is better for shock cords than Kevlar.

Oh, the other chat, I thought I would break my response into two parts, I
will send my suggestions going forward as a separate post.

Part 1, on the personal side,

BAR

Personally, most of my projects live in the back or middle rows.  It has
been a long time since Payton and I did much in the front row. But that is
how I got (re)started in the hobby.  You all know the story, launched back
in the day when you were a kid, got out of it, your own kid is born, pick up
a Estes starter kit, not sure where to launch it rediscover the hobby with
bigger projects….. And you are back in it.

What links you as a kid launching, and you WITH your kid launching, is the
front row.

Science and Space.

Again going back to when I was a kid, I didn’t come from a family that did
projects like rockets.  My friend Doug and I started doing rocket stuff on
our own from kits we picked up at the small toy store by our house.  His dad
was an engineer and would help us out if we asked but most of what we
learned was trial and error.  

I remember having a failure of a rocket and asking Doug’s dad questions, he
never told us what to do, but would answer our questions to help us figure
it out on your own, and sometimes we did figure it out, other times we just
wanted to see what a hot wheels car would do on an A motor.  Learned a lot,
not just about rockets but about ‘figuring things out’.  This stuff was fun,
including the figuring it out part.

Oh, turns out Hot Wheels don’t track very well with a motor glued to the
top, but we sure did try it a bunch more times because the failure was
spectacular!

I have enjoyed helping out the TARC teams that have asked me for
suggestions, wow these ‘kids’ are smart and I get a kick out of seeing how
they ‘figure it out’.

When people ask why did I decide to go to college for engineering? I think
back to launching rockets and model planes when I was a kid. 40 years later
I have a job where I get paid to ‘figure things out’.  How many of the kids
that get introduced to rockets by ROC will be engineers in 2050?

ROCtober.  Some of you have asked why did I get so involved with ROCtober?
Here is the short story.  Going up to ROC launches quickly became ‘guy time
for me and Payton’ something we would look forward to, starting with a few
Estes up to the bigger projects we have done.  When he joined Cub Scouts, I
started bringing up the kids to November ROCstock.  I didn’t really think
about it, but ‘our time’ became other peoples time.  So I figured if I
dedicate my time for ROCtober to the groups, ROCstock goes back to being
father and son time. 

Not to say that I don’t enjoy ROCtober but it hasn’t ever been about ‘me and
the boy’ flying rockets it has always been for me,  my time to (fill in the
cliché here) pay it forward, give back to the group, give back to the sport,
volunteer time or whatever you call it.   But ROCstock, that is my (and
Payton’s) time.

I wonder if that is how ROC should look at ROCtober vs. the rest of the
year, ROCtober is giving back, but the rest of the year is mine.

Suggestions on groups, coming next

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. roc-chat
  3. Archive
  4. 08-2014