Among the bottle rocket aficionados at the Westmoreland Fair, there’s a debate about which pop bottle works best.
“Pepsi works better than Coke,” said Lyndsey Androstic, announcer for Tuesday’s 4-H rocket competition at the Peoples Grandstand Arena.
Others swear by Mountain Dew.
Regardless, what garnered the most attention on Tuesday were things like altitude, accuracy, hang time and design.
4-H and Future Farmers of America rocket enthusiasts compete to see who has the best-decorated bottle and whose bottle has the longest hang time. The bottle rockets are launched with pressurized air, while the traditional model rockets use an electronic launch controller. Those who fly the latter aim for accuracy and altitude.
Rockets were introduced into the 4-H curriculum in 1980 and have grown in popularity since then, said George Sproat, 4-H Rockets superintendent.
“We wanted something anybody could do,” Sproat said. “Bottle rockets came later, but they are developing into quite a show.”
4-H clubs that have active rocket programs include Sunshine, Chestnut Ridge, Blue Ribbon Ag and Covered Bridge. On Tuesday, some of them wore T-shirts with the slogan “Dream It, Build It, Launch It.”
Chestnut Ridge member Clara Volpe, 9, of Derry, has followed her brother William, 10, into model rocketry. “I just wanted to build a rocket — I thought it would be very cool,” she said.
On Tuesday, she was one of the few who launched both a bottle rocket and a model rocket. Her bottle rocket hang time was 3.49 seconds, but her model rocket distance was not measured because it was deemed too far away.
Clara won third place in Bottle Rocket Display.
