How to Interest People in Model Rocketry

From LUNARwiki

5 rules for teaching grades 4-6

When I taught the 4, 5, 6 grade rocketry club I used these 5 rules. (Tom Biasi)

1. They want to see something go up in the air.
2. They want to take part in the thing going up in the air.
3. They want to make their own and see it go up in the air.
4. Don't spend too much time building, spend the time launching.
5. The things that go up also come down. Cuts building time if they can fly again. (Introduce recovery)

Market Research from a "Hobby Trade Association"

The hobby trade association found (in the 90s) to maintain that, you need to interest the 29-47 crowd with those that have disposable income.

For example, most new R/C flyers I meet that join up the local club have never flown a airplane as a youth.

They became interested after they got spare time on their hands, and money to spend doing thing they thought was be cool.

A smaller cross section are interested in R/C planes to interest their children, and themselves at the same time.

Until the manufactures changed their product line-up in the 90s, the R/C hobby was mostly very older men, with very little membership in the 29-47 consuming group. The manufactures, going against the AMA ideas, changed the entire face of R/C in the last 10 years with ARFS and easy to start nitro engines,and it's a very thriving situation. The old school was saying if it ain't a box of sticks, it ain't no airplane. It reminded me of the CW situation in Amateur Radio. The old timers proved to be wrong. The flying fields are packed with men and some women in that age group now, and you actually have to wait at times to get flying time in. the hobby stores are packed with R/C goods to overflowing. Ten years ago, most the R/C shelves were very dusty in my town.

In the last 5 years electric flight has put R/C planes into just about anyones hands, and you can fly them in a soccer field and some in their backyards. (Cranny Dane)

Education provides slow growth

Bring rocketry to the classroom and to your local youth groups. Over and over and over again.

Don't expect everyone in a class to "get into" the hobby or stay with it, but if you get 1 or 2 out of every few classes, it begins to add up.

I started a program with our local Boys & Girls club that began with beginners (7 week after school program). After two years a lot of the kids in the beginner classes were asking for more, so we have started an intermediate program. Between the beginner class they had and this new one, most of these kids had built a half dozen kits or more on their own. It works.

It's not "instant", nor even "fast", but it does work. If everyone on this news group did a few classes a year I am convinced that the growth rate would be noticable. (Jim Flis)