how i, along with a couple of my friends, created a local rocketry club and participated in the national American Rocketry Competition
a friend of mine at school, Jake, first brought up the idea of building rockets as a team in the end of our freshman year. we tried to gather people during the fall of sophomore year but it didn't work out too well, because nobody we knew really knew what model rocketry was, and we didn't really teach them.
over the following summer and through sophomore year, i gradually built more and more advanced rockets on my own, advancing my knowledge of rocket fabircation and design, and Arduino programming.
by the spring of sophomore year, my friends and fellow rocketry nerds Julian and Adi had gotten into building my rockets with me, and we designed our first rocket as a team, Jeff. Jeff was a pretty big success for our first custom rocket, but it was an adjustment for me to start working as a team when i had gotten into my own solitary rhythm over the last half a year. over the summer of 2024, we built two more rockets, Hector and Berlioz, and by now, i was beginning to get comfortable working as a team with my friends.
as junior year rolled around i knew i was serious about actually building a team for TARC that year, and so i began getting organized. Julian and Adi went to a different school than me so i knew i had some work cut out for me to organize a group with people from both my school and their school. at this time, another friend from Julian and Adi's school, with model rocketry experience, Nick, joined our group of club co-leaders. by the end of september, i had:
and together, the four of us:
from my experience trying to start a rocketry club at my school, and Julian and Adi's experience at their school (Nick was the only new member they got), we knew we would have to spend a little while introducing people to model rocketry in general before we dove into strategical TARC team formation mode. to achieve this, we formulated a basic curriculum, for teaching whoever came to our meetings after we advertised our club the basics, in a way that they would be entertained, not overwhelmed, and would come back to learn more. the first few meetings went like this:
and most importantly,
we wanted to make the kit as easy as possible for our club members to do all on their own, both so that they could feel accomplished in their efforts, and also have the patience left to actually learn the inner workings of their rocket as they built it. to achieve this, we tried to simplify the build process with details like making it fully assemblable with just wood glue and including a pre-made fin jig, as well as writing up simple instructions for assembly. creating these kits included: