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On Tuesday the 6th March, I left my usual place of work at lunch time and after having trouble getting home due to the normal train problems, I packed the car and left for Cambridge.
The drive to Impington, Cambridge was fairly straight forward and luckily it was also quite a easy drive apart from a few miles of road works at the start of the M11.
I arrived at Paul's house at around 4.30pm where we chatted for a while before leaving for the school at around 5.15pm.
The school/college looked quite big and had a nice sized field which Paul told me we would use the following week to launch from. As I parked up, the teacher must have seen us arrive as she came out and introduced herself.
We quickly unloaded the car and went into the classroom.
We chatted for a while and waited for the children to arrive as the class was not starting until 6.00pm.
Soon a steady stream of kids arrived at around 5.50pm the teacher said that all the kids had arrived and so we started the workshop.
Myself and Paul handed each child a rocket kit and for the next hour and a quarter we were busy going around to each table of kids in turn and helping them to build their own rocket.
At the end of the lesson every child had a finished rocket and even the teacher had asked if she could build one.
The children quickly cleared away the mess and left for home and after a quick chat with Paul and the teachers the car was reloaded and I also left for home, and looking forward to the following week when we help the kids launch their rockets.
I got home at around 9.30pm and felt shattered but I had really enjoyed the day.
The second week soon came and I again left work early and drove to Paul's house then on to the school.
Soon both children and their parents were turning up, and by 6.00pm we had a crowd of around 25 people all waiting to see the rocket launches.
Paul and myself quickly set up the launch pad and systems on the school field and got ready to launch the rockets.
Paul asked for the first rocket and a boy came over with his Hijax rocket and I tried to arm it with an quest B6-2 engine.
The engine was a very tight fit and it only went in three quarters of the way in so I used a small pair of pliers to bend the engine hook out of the way.
We then added the recovery wadding and installed the igniter.
The rocket was put on the pad and after giving the child some instructions on how to use the launch system, a 5 second countdown was done by the crowd.
On one the rocket leapt from the pad and headed into the darkness.
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The parachute worked perfectly and the rocket drifted to the far end of the
field.
For the next hour we launched all the rockets but after the first 4 we decided to launch the rest on Estes A engines as the rockets were drifting too far and the kids were having a hard time recovering them.
The workshops were a great success and a number of the parents told me they were now planning to visit the local model shop the next day to buy a rocketry starter set.
