Aeronautical Velocity Challenge - National Competition

At AVC this year I was on the rocket team for the first time, with no idea how they worked. I learnt how to make the bottle rockets amongst an experienced and friendly team. They taught me all the processes and I learnt a lot. We all had a productive role on the day: Isabelle was the fin, Hailey was the bottle attacher and the decorator was Courtney who was also the leader and fin cutter, while I measured and drew the fins. The best thing for me, competing there with other schools, was that when something did not work quite as planned we learnt quickly what had gone wrong and acted straight away. The AVC Rocket Team consisted of: Jonathan Walsh, Isabelle McPhail, Hailey Frew & Courtney Nielsen. (By Jonathan Walsh) Plane Team: The plane side of things was great. Our team of 4 had to create 3 planes in 40 minutes. One plane for speed, one for height and one to dogfight. After winning the regional competition a couple of weeks ago, we went up to the Wollongong University to compete in the National Competition. Our school was originally represented by Elizabeth Curline, Nathan Spinks, Layton Walsh and myself, Harry Thomas. When the National Competition was looming, a week or so away, two of our team members (Elizabeth and Nathan) had to leave due to other commitments and were replaced by Micah Perry and Lincoln Davie. The actual competition was friendly but stressful and our planes didn't perform as well as we would have hoped, so, we decided to all contribute to decorating the final dogfight plane and surprisingly we won $250 for the school from the aesthetics prize. Overall, the competition was exciting and a really enjoyable experience for the whole team. (by Harrison Thomas)