Flying
MODEL ROCKETRY
In 2007, my eldest daughter wanted to join a club. When presented with the local 4-H offerings, she chose “model rocketry”. But there was in fact no model rocketry club to be had. I spent most of 2008 in the process of becoming credentialed as a 4-H volunteer leader, assembling the bare minimum number of interested kids, and finding places to meet and places to fly.
Then, when all those challenges were met, my eldest daughter decided the club was boring and stopped.
I’m still on my personal mission, though. I was interested in rocketry as a boy, flying my first model on the first day it was legal for me to do so: 11 April 1975, my tenth birthday. No one followed up with me on how powerful model rocketry can be for linking ideas in physics, math, chemistry, electronics… so I let it dwindle away.
But I’m back now, determined to “do it right” this time. I’ve become acquainted with the math, learned the best practices for construction (even if I don’t always perform them well), immersed myself in the whys and hows of the safety code and how it relates to the law … and I even get to fly a rocket once in a while.
Most of the news about this can be found on the main page in the “Flying” category. But also…
Gear-Mania {LINK PENDING} — Adventures in equipment, storage, and just plain stuff.
The Rocket Garden {LINK PENDING} — photos of my models, in our home Gallery site.
SPACE & SPACE SCIENCE
Actually, I don’t have any content to contribute here. But I wanted to mention it — it is one of my favorite things, and has been since losing myself in the “moon mission” diagrams in the 1967 edition of the Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas.