Wyatt Bolen launched his 4-H project into the sky this week, delighting onlookers as it zipped high into the air before drifting back to land in a muddy field nearby.
Wyatt, who is 11, is a fourth-year 4-H’er enrolled in one of his favorite projects, rocketry.
On Tuesday, after a heavy rainstorm, Wyatt and his family met friends south of Hartford to give his homemade rocket the launch required before conference judging began at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
Last year’s rocketry project leader, Junior Wharton, and his son Jeremy came to the launch site to advise Wyatt on preparation and launch procedures that would give the best height without damaging the rocket. It needed to be in relatively good condition when it came time to check out Wyatt’s rocket-construction skills at the judging.
Wharton showed the youngster how to pack the rocket’s parachute inside paper and tuck it into the body of the missile.
“Because if you don’t have it when you shoot it off, the parachute’ll melt,” he explained.
Wyatt built the rocket from a kit. Its slender tube of body was capped with a nose cone and balanced at the bottom with a tubular engine compartment circled by six smaller, shorter tubes with fins.
Getting the fins on straight had been the most challenging part of the entire project, Wyatt told the judge during questioning at Thursday night’s conference judging. He’d used a guide to slide them onto the small tubes and stuck them on with slow-drying glue.
The rocket was about 2 1/2 feet long, painted a deep royal blue and decorated painstakingly with stylized decals. The judge complimented Wyatt on the rocket’s unique design and the smooth finish he’d painted onto the rocket and covered with clear sealer. The decals were especially well-done.
“You did a really nice job on it,” the judge told Wyatt Thursday night.
On Tuesday, however, Wyatt’s primary concern was whether the rocket would fly into the sky and, if it did, how far it would go with its B4-4 motor.
He’d built a launch pad with a centering wire to hold the rocket upright and, after adjusting it meticulously in place, he walked about 20 feet to the tailgate of Wharton’s pickup truck and prepared for the trial take-off.
The rocket launcher was made up of a wooden board with switches and a series of wires running from the board to a lawn tractor battery nestled in a 5-gallon bucket.
“Just like a doorbell,” Wharton said. “When the 2 wires come together, it’ll ignite.
It was all Wyatt needed. When he flipped the switch, the signal triggered the rocket’s ignition and propelled it skyward with remarkable speed.
“This will probably go up there a pretty good lick,” Wharton predicted before the launch.
He was correct. Estimates of the rocket’s height ranged from 200 to 300 feet; the parachute opened right on schedule, and the rocket settled down gently in the mud-softened field.
Wyatt’s success only whetted the appetites of him and the others.
Within minutes, Wyatt had placed his rocket from last year on the launch pad and soon set another missile hurtling into the air. This one went up an estimated 600 to 800 feet. Wyatt was not surprised the old rocket had at least doubled the height of the new, longer and sleeker model. He attributed the difference in height to the difference in the types of rockets he’d made during those project years.
“It’s fun,” he said. “You get to watch it fly. It’s a learning experience.”
Confident that the rocket worked well, Wyatt was ready to go before the judges to see what they thought of his project.
Wyatt had kept meticulous records to chronicle all the work he had invested in the project, why and what he did to complete it, what he’d learned, meterological conditions at Tuesday’s trial run, photographs from the launch and other detailed information.
“What I have learned, what’s happened in the building of it, and if you had fun,” Wyatt said of the conversation he was anticipating.
He already had been through competitions and judgings for several of his projects this year.
“My geology got a purple,” he said, adding that he also had received a purple in the shooting competition earlier this year.
“Grand champion actually,” he said, correcting himself.
He also is enrolled in the foods project, which was to be judged this week, too.
If Wyatt felt nervous waiting in line for the rocket judging on Thursday, he did not show it.
He sat across the table from two judges and answered questions quickly and clearly. If he was going to be judged down on anything, it would be on the fins, which he said had been the most challenging part of the project.
In the end, it was the fins that kept the rocket a hair shy of perfection.
“The things that are holding you back from a purple are the fins,” the judge said.
Two were perfectly placed and the other four were not quite as perfect.
Wyatt thanked the judges and walked away from the table with a blue ribbon, satisfied that he’d done his best with a challenging project. And that he’d repeat the effort next year.
Wyatt, the son of Theresa McFarland and Mark Bolen, is a member of Rinker 4-H Club.