Cub Scout Rocket Launch (10/27/2007)
Cub Scout Pack 232 of Lino Lakes held their annual rocket
launch today (Saturday, October 27). I arrived at Rice Elementary at
a little after 2 pm and started setting up equipment while waiting
for the soccer games to finish. By 2:30 pm the soccer kids were gone
and the first of the cubs were arriving. The pack had scheduled
Tiger / Wolfe cubs to fly at 3 and Bears / Webelos to fly at 4. This
worked out quite nicely as the boys were pretty evenly divided into
two groups of 15-20 each. The weather also cooperated. The
forecasted 15+ MPH wind wasn't there. I don't think it ever got
about 10 MPH and gradually dropped to a light breeze of the north by
the end of the day. At times it was dead calm.
The younger boys were flying whatever Estes calls its latest
incarnation of the Gnome on 1/2A and the older boys were flying
Wizards on A8 motors. The older boys also brought along a number of
rockets from last year or the year before (Custom Zero and Estes
Chrome Domes). Along with these rockets one boy had a HelliCat and a
couple of others had Fat Boys. The boys were all given motors to fly
their 'official' rockets twice each. All told, there were about 80
flights made between 2:30 and 5:00 pm. I ended the afternoon flying
a BT-60 based cluster on 3xB6 motors.
I believe there were 16 boys out of the group that were
flying their very first model rockets. So was one sister who came
along with a rocket to fly.I am getting a list of their names from
the Pack Master and will be generating certificates for them. I'll
also forward the names to the NAR for the 50th anniversary effort.
This was the third time I flew with the pack since moving to
Minnesota in September 2005. It was a very successful launch and the
kids all seemed to have a great time.
[Buzz McDermott]
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