Monday, January 31, 2011

3,2,1 Blast Off!

Pack377_SpaceDerby2009-3817Image by cmiked via Flickr
I hope  you had a great weekend. I did. I ended up taking over leadership of my son's Cub Scout Pack this year and it has been a lot of work but a lot of fun also.

This weekend was out first Space Derby in recent memory. I have since heard rumors that there was a few in the past, but none experienced by any of us now participating. So, as a pack we bought a slick new track, passed  out the kits, had a meeting to start building them and off we went. And off they flew! Some of the rockets went through the track and crashed at the end, flying of the track. Good thing someone thought to bring some fast drying model glue. One or two rockets had so much torque they just spun right off the guide!

One of my top goals was to have maximum participation. In order to do that we used a system called the perfect N which is sort of like a modified round robin tournament. Every racer raced four times, once in each lane. It was great. The only delays were the time it took to wind each rocket. There was also a few technical problems and kinks we worked out on the way but still everybody raced 4 times. Twenty heats is a lot of heats for a space derby.

I know it went well because after the official heats were over people wanted to race some more just for fun. And that is what Cub Scouting is supposed to be, fun with a purpose. Mostly, it was the joy of watching my own son getting a ribbon and a huge smile. Being a dad is very cool.

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