Scout Launch today
 

Comrades:

My nephew and his troop worked on their Space Exploration merit badge together. Today was launch day and the boys needed two successful flights to qualify. We used a different field from our usual park launch. This field usually has either cotton or corn, but today it was a magnificent rocket-launching area. Not a single failure of the Estes "starters". Only a few pictures.

Picture 1 is the view to the northeast showing my nephew's general purpose scouting rocket he build as a Cub Scout. After being used for 50+ science fair launches, glider launching and just-for-fun launching, it is well-used and reliable.

Picture 2 is the launch view to the southeast

Picture 3 is my Empire Nike-Ajax. We had some pad tip in the soft earth but it got off alright on a D12-3. Some recovery damage, but I'm already working on it.

Picture 4 is my nephew's BMS/Alway Arcas that also flew twice. A3-4T with recovery within 30 feet of the pad.

We also launched my rescue Alpha and TLP Hellfire. Both flew well. The other scouts flew various mostly pre-assembled rockets. While I understand, a part of me wishes they had built them old-school, cutting and gluing on balsa fins and painting them.

We had fun.

The last three times I did the Space Ex MB for Troop 464, I had them build the Alpha. Let me tell you that the attention spans and fine motor controls in the fingers of kids today and the last 10 years are abysmal. The only ones who did well are those whose fathers made them help with work around the house/farm that required attention to detail and tool use. Otherwise they are dangerous with an exacto knife AND glue. I had to give up using CA glue to attach the fins. Dang near all of them would squeeze out half a tube on the fin root and end up attaching it to their fingers.

The lack of fine motor skills I attribute to not being taught cursive writing. The home school/private/parochial school kids still were taught it, but the Illinoisy public schools abandoned it for almost 10 years starting in 2004 or so.

Joe, I totally agree with you about the fine motor skills of the kids but I gotta tell you some of the dads I've worked with in scouting are not a whole lot better. No tool skills. Really no underlying mechanical skills of any kind. There's no chance they could teach their kids if they have no frame of reference. I wouldn't give some of these dads an E-Xacto knife much less their kids. And don't get me started on following instructions. . . .

Those kids' dads are the Nintendo generation. They passed that "skill set" to their kids who carry it on with Playstations and X-Boxes.

That's a nice looking field. Nice looking beyond the field, too. :cool:

Amen, brother! Not a very typical sight (or ‘site’) east of the Mississippi! :(

Earl

Sounds like a bunch of Mechanically DEclined Bozos.
One more area that is being societally DUMBED DOWN.

I found building most rockets very easy at the age of 8.
My father had already shown me how to solder, use a power drill, drill press, Xacto tools, and a Dremel.
I wasn't allowed use of power saws (jig, table, circular, chain) until I was 10.
That was not due to my Dad thinking I wasn't capable, but solely due to Mom's insistence and fear-mongering.
I wouldn't trust anyone I don't know under age 30 with ANY sort of power tools now.

I don't know how it goes in other school systems, but in sixth grade in Ohio were I lived circa 1974, we were taught all sorts of shop, sewing and cooking skills in sixth grade. Not all of them intensive (we learned the theories behind welding and were given the opportunity to run a bead), but enough to give you a taste of the practice. It was then that I was taught (hand) drafting skills which would become my life's pursuit. In addition, trying to remember all the "shop" skills, we were taught:
setting type for an offset printing press
plastics working
sand casting
drafting
woodworking
Electric Arc Welding
Leatherworking

I was kinda shocked sometime in the early 2000's to visit my old middle school when my oldest daughter was there, to learn that all of the "shop" class rooms had been converted to regular class rooms and that they weren't teaching that stuff anymore.

When I was in junior high I had classes in two diferent metal shops, a wood shop, a drafting room, and a print shop. By ninth grade (1982) the school district had adopted a new policy and I had to take cooking, sewing, and home economics. I can't imagine kids nowadays using the equipment we had access to back then - welders, torches, gas fired soldering irons, table metal shears, lathes, bandsaws, etc. That cirriculum now is only available in a separate vocational-technical school building across the street from the high school.

I trust all my sons and their buddies with power tools and knives because they were all taught properly by their dads. I just hope my boys pass on those skills and attitudes to their kids. Of course, I'll hopefully be able to help whenever they get around to jumping into the gene pool.