Tonight was Cameron’s Cub Scout Space Derby. It’s like the Pinewood Derby, but an airplane with rubberband-driven propeller power instead. Here’s a 30 second video of another pack’s Space Derby. Like most of these things, the key is for the kid to really do the project himself, which Cameron did.

And he did a great job with his rocket. He glued the two pieces together (it comes as two hollowed-out blocks), did most of the sanding to give the rocket its shape, chose the paint scheme & decals, spray-painted the body, chose the placement and shape of the wings and tail fins (the angled fins were inspired by a picture he saw online of an F14), cut out the wings and fins, and did most of the spray painting of the wings and fins (his finger gave out toward the end so I did the last 30 seconds or so). I did some of the initial shaping (he had a tough time knocking the corners off the blocks, so I rounded off the corners to get the process started), I cut the slots for the hanger, wings, & fins, I rubbed on most of the decals (Cam couldn’t quite get enough pressure on them to get a clean transfer), and I served as an extra set of hands when Cam cut out the wings & fins and to assemble the propeller assembly.

So tonight at the pack meeting we raced, and Cam raced against the other 4 boys in Tiger Cubs in a double-elimination tournament. Cam finished undefeated and also received the award for most original design. He did a really, really good job with all of it. And since it really was his project, he was really geeked when he won. It was great.