Behind the Scenes: New Albany Rocketry Club

It all started around a year ago. While looking for internships, winter programs, and camps to attend, my mom stumbled upon junk mail about a model rocketry class. The class would go through the details about model rocketry and a national competition: The American Rocketry Challenge.

At first, I really didn't want to do the class, because I thought it would just be a boring workshop without much content. I refused for several days before eventually caving in and agreeing to take the class. After looking the challenge up, I realized that this would be an opportunity for me to make use of my prior engineering interests while exploring something new. I put together a team, and entered the competition in hopes of qualifying for nationals, but we were in for a rough ride.

As first timers, we built our first rocket with relative ease. It was a simple kit that we bought from Hobby Lobby so we could bond as a team and get our first hands-on experience with rocketry. We then designed the rocket on Open Rocket, a free software for rocket simulations, and bought all the parts we would need from stores like Apogee Components, eRockets, and PerfectFlite. The rocket itself didn't take too long to build, but we had not gotten to the hardest part yet: testing.

Our first several tests (to the surprise of several NAR members) flew straight up on the first flight, cementing the unconventional fin design on our rocket. However, we were way off on the target height set by the competition. After some modifications, our flights looked promising. That's when we had our first flight failure. We had used elastic for the shock chord, and the heat from the ejection charge had burned through it, causing a seperation of the motor body from the payload section. We couldn't get the rocket back to its original potential, and ended up not making the national fly-offs.

Despite a dissapointing end to the season, we had shown that model rocketry was an extremely fun hobby. I evenually ended up going to several other competitions with smaller rockets, and realized the minimal amount of junior rocketeers attending. I decided I wanted to help get more juniors into competitions so I started a club at my school.

During our school club show, we conducted three launches. This not only promoted the club to students, but put us on administration's radar. Soon after, we hosted our first community event: the Stem Fest. We were able to bring together over 70 members of the community to learn more about the STEM clubs at our school, as well as participate in fun STEM-focused activites from the Robotics team, Science Olympiad team, Cybersecurity team, the Rocketry Club, and RoboThink, a local company involved in STEM development in kids. Additionally, we were able to convince school administration to allow the event to continue annually.

This is just the begining for the New Albany Rocketry Club. We are planning to help rocketry expand to other schools in our area, talking to companies for sponsorship and are preparing for future events and the upcoming TARC season.

From 5 members to 34, this is the story of the New Albany Rocketry Club.

Link to Open Rocket Simulations: https://openrocket.info

Link to Apogee Components: https://www.apogeerockets.com

Link to eRockets: https://www.erockets.biz

Link to PerfectFlite: http://www.perfectflite.com/Firefly.html

Link to the New Albany Rocketry Club Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newalbanyrocketry/

Link to Google Photos album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/H2CQ53qGktK81FYW9

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