Space Derby 2014
Of the three kinds of derbys that our cub scout pack participates in, I think the Space Derby is my least favorite. Like the pinewood derby, each scout is supplied with a kit consisting of a chunk of balsa wood, some suggested building instructions, and a small bag of odds and ends to be used to make the propeller and the rubber bands that are the motor. Our boys brought their kits home from their den meetings last Wednesday, and the Space Derby was held last night.
The difficulties we experienced this year are probably my fault. I forgot about making the rockets until Monday morning. Remembering as we were eating breakfast, I found Steven's wood glue and glued the two halves of each rocket together while simultaneously trying to get the boys packed and ready to leave for school. When they returned home that afternoon, I handed Josh and Peter each a sheet of sandpaper and told them to start sanding. (The balsa wood is supposedly soft enough that it is supposed to be shaped via sandpaper rather than carved with a knife.) Josh got to work and sanded for maybe an entire ten minutes. Peter was interested in something else at the moment, so I doubt his piece of sandpaper even touched his wood. After several reminders and encouragement, I focused my energies on getting ready for dinner and Family Home Evening. If the boys weren't really interested, I wasn't going to stress about it.
Tuesday afternoon, when we came home from school with just three hours until the pack meeting, I again suggested that the boys work on their rockets. Josh asked if we could use the power sander, and at that point, I was willing to try anything. I plugged in the sander and held it as the boys rubbed their blocks of wood against it, trying to sand a rectangular block of wood into a cylinder with a rounded end. Peter lasted for about five minutes this time before his hands were kind of numb from the jittering sander. He gave up and returned indoors. Josh lasted about twenty minutes, and achieved a semblance of a cylinder before he gave up and went back inside. I persisted a little longer, first working on Peter's rocket, then touching up Josh's before I figured that they were "good enough" and went inside.
The next step in the construction process involved cutting a slit in the top to insert a plastic piece that would be the hanger, by which the rocket would hang from the line on which it would race. The instructions suggested cutting the groove with a sharpened pencil. I found a pencil and a ruler, carefully measured where the slit was supposed to be, and drew a line with the pencil. Scraping the pencil back and forth, I deepened the slot until I thought I might be able to get the plastic piece in. It wasn't deep enough. Eventually I resorted to a kitchen knife to get the slot to the correct depth for the hanger. Then I put a drop of glue on the slit and inserted the hanger, and then repeated the entire process with the other rocket.
The next step was to construct the propeller. The kit had a white nose button, a yellow propeller blade, a tiny metal bushing, a wire with a loop on one end and a thin red plastic tube. The straight part of the wire was supposed to go through the nose button, then the bushing, then the propeller, and then I was supposed to bend it back around the end of the propeller so it would stay. The red tube was supposed to slide over the loop of the wire to protect the rubber bands that would be held by the loop. Sliding that red tube onto the wire was perhaps the most difficult part of putting the propeller together. The tube was straight, the wire was curved. The wire end was sharp, the tube walls were thin and easily perforated. Finally, I managed to get one propeller entirely assembled, and I passed the rocket to Josh so he could get some Sharpies and decorate it. We didn't bother with wings or fins or paint or anything fancy like that.
Then I pulled out the materials to assemble Peter's propeller, only to discover that the wire was missing. We searched for it. We looked on the table, and under the table. We looked in the kit boxes, and on the shelves around the boxes. I crawled around on my hands and knees quartering the entire area, but it was no use. The wire had vanished. Realizing I had to do something quickly so I could make dinner before we needed to leave, I found a wire with my jewelry making equipment that was thin enough to fit, and substituted it. I put the propeller together, told Peter to start decorating, and got to work on dinner.
After dinner, we headed out to the pack meeting. Hannah wisely decided to stay home, so it was just John, Josh and Peter and me. (Steven was probably at Universal Studios in Orlando at the time.) When we arrived at the church building, at exactly 7pm, there were three cars in the parking lot, including ours. The doors were unlocked and we could see that the rocket track was set up in the gym so we went in and helped set up some chairs. Eventually a few more families straggled in, and gathered around the starting area of the flight line. There continued to be problems.
Josh got busy winding up his rubber bands, but he must have wound them too far because they snapped. Luckily, I had brought a few extra rubber bands with me and was able to replace them, but then I couldn't get them to fit down the tube of the rocket, even though I spent about ten minutes trying.
Meanwhile, the thin wire I had used on Peter's rocket was not strong enough to hold the rubber bands when they were wound up. The loop pulled open and the rubber bands pulled out. Eventually, I took the propeller from Josh's rocket and inserted it into Peter's rocket, so at least Peter was able to race his a few times. (I don't think it even made it a quarter of the way down the track.)
Other kids had difficulties with their rockets, too. Some rocket propellers were either attached the wrong way around or were wound backwards so when they were set off, they wanted to travel backwards and ended up going nowhere. One family hadn't realized that the hanger was supposed to be glued in (because it had to support the weight of the rocket) and so there was a search for super glue to attach it. Not all of the rockets were failures. One little boy had a very professional looking rocket, painted a shiny green and black, and it consistently traveled to the very end of the track almost every time, until its rubber bands snapped near the end of the evening.
Because there were so few boys there, and because of all the difficulties people had with their rockets, there wasn't really a competition. Rockets that were in working order at a given moment were wound up and raced, but no one really kept track of the score. My boys were mostly playing. Josh found a baby and a little boy (about 3 years old) to play with, and Peter fought over some toy trucks that had been brought in from the nursery. Finally, they let the boys get a treat, had the closing prayer and let us go home. Someone suggested that since so few people had been there, they might try it again in two months. If they do, I think I'm going to ditch.
The difficulties we experienced this year are probably my fault. I forgot about making the rockets until Monday morning. Remembering as we were eating breakfast, I found Steven's wood glue and glued the two halves of each rocket together while simultaneously trying to get the boys packed and ready to leave for school. When they returned home that afternoon, I handed Josh and Peter each a sheet of sandpaper and told them to start sanding. (The balsa wood is supposedly soft enough that it is supposed to be shaped via sandpaper rather than carved with a knife.) Josh got to work and sanded for maybe an entire ten minutes. Peter was interested in something else at the moment, so I doubt his piece of sandpaper even touched his wood. After several reminders and encouragement, I focused my energies on getting ready for dinner and Family Home Evening. If the boys weren't really interested, I wasn't going to stress about it. Tuesday afternoon, when we came home from school with just three hours until the pack meeting, I again suggested that the boys work on their rockets. Josh asked if we could use the power sander, and at that point, I was willing to try anything. I plugged in the sander and held it as the boys rubbed their blocks of wood against it, trying to sand a rectangular block of wood into a cylinder with a rounded end. Peter lasted for about five minutes this time before his hands were kind of numb from the jittering sander. He gave up and returned indoors. Josh lasted about twenty minutes, and achieved a semblance of a cylinder before he gave up and went back inside. I persisted a little longer, first working on Peter's rocket, then touching up Josh's before I figured that they were "good enough" and went inside.
The next step in the construction process involved cutting a slit in the top to insert a plastic piece that would be the hanger, by which the rocket would hang from the line on which it would race. The instructions suggested cutting the groove with a sharpened pencil. I found a pencil and a ruler, carefully measured where the slit was supposed to be, and drew a line with the pencil. Scraping the pencil back and forth, I deepened the slot until I thought I might be able to get the plastic piece in. It wasn't deep enough. Eventually I resorted to a kitchen knife to get the slot to the correct depth for the hanger. Then I put a drop of glue on the slit and inserted the hanger, and then repeated the entire process with the other rocket.The next step was to construct the propeller. The kit had a white nose button, a yellow propeller blade, a tiny metal bushing, a wire with a loop on one end and a thin red plastic tube. The straight part of the wire was supposed to go through the nose button, then the bushing, then the propeller, and then I was supposed to bend it back around the end of the propeller so it would stay. The red tube was supposed to slide over the loop of the wire to protect the rubber bands that would be held by the loop. Sliding that red tube onto the wire was perhaps the most difficult part of putting the propeller together. The tube was straight, the wire was curved. The wire end was sharp, the tube walls were thin and easily perforated. Finally, I managed to get one propeller entirely assembled, and I passed the rocket to Josh so he could get some Sharpies and decorate it. We didn't bother with wings or fins or paint or anything fancy like that.Then I pulled out the materials to assemble Peter's propeller, only to discover that the wire was missing. We searched for it. We looked on the table, and under the table. We looked in the kit boxes, and on the shelves around the boxes. I crawled around on my hands and knees quartering the entire area, but it was no use. The wire had vanished. Realizing I had to do something quickly so I could make dinner before we needed to leave, I found a wire with my jewelry making equipment that was thin enough to fit, and substituted it. I put the propeller together, told Peter to start decorating, and got to work on dinner.
After dinner, we headed out to the pack meeting. Hannah wisely decided to stay home, so it was just John, Josh and Peter and me. (Steven was probably at Universal Studios in Orlando at the time.) When we arrived at the church building, at exactly 7pm, there were three cars in the parking lot, including ours. The doors were unlocked and we could see that the rocket track was set up in the gym so we went in and helped set up some chairs. Eventually a few more families straggled in, and gathered around the starting area of the flight line. There continued to be problems.
Josh got busy winding up his rubber bands, but he must have wound them too far because they snapped. Luckily, I had brought a few extra rubber bands with me and was able to replace them, but then I couldn't get them to fit down the tube of the rocket, even though I spent about ten minutes trying.
Meanwhile, the thin wire I had used on Peter's rocket was not strong enough to hold the rubber bands when they were wound up. The loop pulled open and the rubber bands pulled out. Eventually, I took the propeller from Josh's rocket and inserted it into Peter's rocket, so at least Peter was able to race his a few times. (I don't think it even made it a quarter of the way down the track.)Other kids had difficulties with their rockets, too. Some rocket propellers were either attached the wrong way around or were wound backwards so when they were set off, they wanted to travel backwards and ended up going nowhere. One family hadn't realized that the hanger was supposed to be glued in (because it had to support the weight of the rocket) and so there was a search for super glue to attach it. Not all of the rockets were failures. One little boy had a very professional looking rocket, painted a shiny green and black, and it consistently traveled to the very end of the track almost every time, until its rubber bands snapped near the end of the evening.
Because there were so few boys there, and because of all the difficulties people had with their rockets, there wasn't really a competition. Rockets that were in working order at a given moment were wound up and raced, but no one really kept track of the score. My boys were mostly playing. Josh found a baby and a little boy (about 3 years old) to play with, and Peter fought over some toy trucks that had been brought in from the nursery. Finally, they let the boys get a treat, had the closing prayer and let us go home. Someone suggested that since so few people had been there, they might try it again in two months. If they do, I think I'm going to ditch.
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