Page School Rocketry 2023

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Published: Wednesday, 31 May 2023 11:55

Written by Claude Maina

     Our second year back after the Covid hiatus and it seems like we never left. The consensus is that this was one of the best years we have had. Everything just seemed to go smoothly. It's almost disconcerting - as if we missed something. If we did, then it could not have been important. This was a good year!
     The class size this year was 40 students, a little more than last year, but the trend is still downwards and a lot smaller than the year we started in 2007 - 76 students in three homerooms. The students are in two homerooms again this year with the same team as last year, John Benvenuti and Trina Forrest. As usual, each homeroom builds a different rocket. FlisKits Thing-a-ma-jig is our constant. And for good reason, it is a great kit for first time builders. The components are well made and fit nicely; it goes together easily, tolerant of mistakes and flies very well. Our other rocket has always been the Custom Razor. This year, however, I decided to try something different and talked with Ray DiPaola of FlisKits about putting together a tube-fin rocket kit for us. Ray and I exchanged a few e-mails about what we needed, what he could provide, and pricing, and he came up with a great tube-fin rocket at a great price for us.
     Each year there seems to be some occurrence or characterization that best describes the unit that year. In early years, it almost always involved glue - usually too much. Then for a number of years, the kids seemed to be pretty good about glue - applying the correct amount or maybe too little, but not the gobs that were the norm in the first years. That time is over - we are back to 'too much glue' - way-to-much!
     The first indication that this was going to be a good year was the prebuild session. The prebuild session is where a few students stay after school and help assemble parachutes, streamers and motor packets, fill glue bottles, prep each kit for the build session, and decorate the room with rocketry pictures and some of my rockets that I bring in. This usually takes about 90 minutes to two hours. This year everything was completed in less than an hour. I really thought we had forgotten to do something! Pictures in the Gallery.