The Engineering Club was founded in October 2020 by Jay Patel with the help of an advisor for the Robotics Club, Thomas Bowers, and some of its members.
They’ve been competing for three years now, but this is their first year competing in The American Rocketry Challenge (TARC) and advanced to Nationals in Virginia.
“Basically, around October of 2020 I was having a blast in my engineering design courses, but I realized we were mostly learning theoretical concepts (Boolean algebra, isometric drawings, etc.),” Engineering Club President Jay Patel said. “However, STEM should be all about being applicable to the real world and I realized that we didn’t really have that opportunity as a Title 1, fringe rural school. So I started the engineering club, to be a community where we could finally get hands-on experiences through things like competitions and field trips.”
They were only competing in Robotics in a little local competition, once a year in the fall, but they wanted something they could try to enter in various events that would be available all year long to us, not compete once and be done.
“The TARC, we actually did last year, but not gonna lie we didn’t have Garrett and everything was so new and the obstacles were tough so our rocket blew apart mid-air and we never made it to nationals,” Patel said.
Bowers was a huge advocate for the club when it was founded and still is today. He also puts in his own time and effort by facilitating meetings over the weekends, organizing field trips and funding/networking for the team.
“Our school had a robotics club previously, but while founding it, I altered the constitution and recruited members with a wider array of interests so it could be the ‘engineering’ club, and more focused on STEM in general,” Patel said. “Some of us (including myself) don’t even want to be engineers in the future, our reason behind joining the club and competing is like I said, getting to work more with our hands and just realizing the potential of technology in general.”
This was the club’s third year competing overall, but the first year competing in TARC.
“We were the only high school against college teams in those competitions and we finished middle of the pack two years ago, we can in fourth place out of 22 teams last year. Which I thought was pretty good beating 18 colleges,” Engineering Club advisor Thomas Bowers said.
However, a major obstacle they had with this competition is resources.
“To tackle this problem, a skill we developed was maintaining resilience and developing a strong product with our limited resources,” Patel said. “To construct the fuselage and wings, we hauled a massive piece of foam from Home Depot in the back of my friend’s truck, and stuck skewers through them for structural integrity. We roughly shaped the airfoil using a borrowed rotary sander and cut out the stabilizers and control surfaces with an X-Acto knife. Additionally, after contacting hobby shops for suggestions regarding reliable electronics, we’d velcro-strapped them onto our plane. Finally to purchase these expensive components, our club had hosted a fundraising night at our local Chick-Fil-A.”
One person in particular was a huge help to the club this year and is accredited to the reason the team did so well this year.
“A new member named Garrett Bradshaw, is a junior this year and has been doing rocketry with his dad for years,” Senior Sydney Kasper said. “He is the main reason we succeeded and could make nationals.”
They had a very strong start and the way they achieved it was by looking ahead.
“If we had sat there and been like ‘we should’ve done this’ and stuff like that then we wouldn’t have gotten anything done but instead we pushed forward with a positive outlook,” Sophomore Garret Bradshaw said.
What really made the team want to pursue TARC this year is not only can students compete, but if they advance and excel at the nationals, they can actually win scholarship money and stuff from TARC. It’s not only good for our school and district for bragging rights in publications, but it could help benefit the students.
“We did research and had multiple designs going at once before we tested them all,” Kasper said.
The American Rocketry Challenge, is actually the largest rocketry competition in the U.S. with over 5,000 students competing.
“Students are selected from across the U.S. to fly to Virginia and compete nationally there and then invited to Paris to compete internationally and represent the U.S. Basically, we’re challenged to build a rocket that carries an egg (which has to be uncracked at the end), and reach an exact altitude (this year the number is 850 feet), no higher or lower,” Patel said. “The rocket also has to split into two pieces, both of them landing intact with separate parachutes in 42-45 seconds after the launch. So as you can see, there are a lot of parameters and restrictions so this is sort of our ‘step up’ from the bronze propellor competition (although we are still competing in that one). Hence we’re learning to approach a whole new level of obstacles and challenges than previously.”
The competition process is design, build, fly, repeat. They design their rocket, build their rocket, test it, then repeat the process until satisfied.
“We discussed competitions at a couple of different meetings, and let them have their own little chat groups where they conversed amongst themselves,” Bowers said. “Tried to explain what would be involved in the competition, what the deadlines would be, and our expectations, and try to engage their interests in that particular topic.”
Practice makes perfect. They’ll be test launching every weekend up to the big day because the competitions don’t allow any practice flights there.
“It’s not something just anyone can do over night. There isn’t really last minute chances, you either do it or you don’t, no laziness,” Bradshaw said.
Nationals is going to present the group with newer hurdles, but they’re trying to prepare in advance by conducting multiple test flights with different motors, changing the mass of their rocket and seeing how it affects the altitude they reach.
“I have BIG dreams and goals. This is only a step to me that I need to overcome, and I will, I guess it’s motivation, I’m bringing a lot of motivation with me,” Bradshaw said. “I’ll also be bringing two personal items to nationals with me that my grandmother gifted me when I was younger, they’re my “‘ucky’ items (a wood cross from Jerusalem and a ring).”
The team always strives to be the best and will do whatever it takes to get the results they want.
“We are going to stay calm and do what we know to do,” Bradshaw said. The most important thing is to stay calm: if you get excited, anxious, or upset, things will fall apart before we even get there. We know how to do everything there, so that’s the only thing that’s left to do.”
Enter your text here...