It went better than expected. And we're supposed to encourage young peoples' interest in science, right? And it only consumed three hours. And there were no lasting scars.
So the 1st annual Fox13 Weather Camp has come and gone with no lasting damage. Not even to the Agricenter.
My department spent around $1000 for materials, including airplanes, plywood, paint, trinkets from the company store. Labor was already factored in since we had free reign to dither over this for several weeks. You never know if you got your money's worth from something like this. Response was good, as in, the kids had a good time. Whether they learned anything or not is known only to higher beings, if there are (is) any (one). (That was for the next administration, eta November, 2012.)
The four of us spent a significant number of minutes assembling the airport simulation. We ran the video loop of flying ants converging on the Memphis airport in advance of the squall line, followed by the airborne holding phase of the evening, climaxed by the landing of the remaining aircraft after the squall line clears Memphis. That was ground school. Some people recognized what it was, others were baffled. I spent considerable time narrating. It was supposed to inspire a coherent simulation using our foam airplanes and plywood runway. There would be ten pilots, and about twenty thunderstorms for them to avoid.
Of course the kids had their own sim, in fact there were a couple of dozen going on at any moment. It was part cat rodeo and part Kabuki theater. The "storms" were participants (myself included), holding a cardboard storm image, floating in the path of the pilots. This became a combative situation at times, and I may not have helped by shouting, "There's an airplane, get 'em," at my fellow storms. Live and learn. At the end of the three hours we had three intact planes, and some of the storms were not in great shape, either.
We rolled with the flow since we had no choice. There were only a couple of half-minute intervals when I considered a quintuple-vasectomy. Still, it was a good thing that I did not know how to do it myself.
I enjoyed talking to mothers and kids about good schools for operational and research meteorology. I remember those days. One kid even knew there were positive and negative lightning strokes.
Fox13 is already planning on another camp next summer. They will probably have to expand the hours to allow time for waiting in multiple lines. The chroma-key stage was the main attraction and drew the most kids. We should just order a couple of thousand balsa gliders and save ourselves a lot of trouble.