Scott and Brad’s fastest boats in the stock pond

The year that Scott was taking Physics from Mr. Lien, one of their class projects was to build self propelled boats to go across the pond at the High School (the pond was on the West side of the Football Fields). As part of the assignment Scott used his engineering intuition to develop a prototype stealth hydro boat that would be propelled by model rocket engines. Scott recognized the need to keep these boats light in design so that they would "jet" quickly across the pond. To do this he used Styrofoam laying around the farm from some of the many different "winterizing" projects we had made over the years. If you know anything about "Ober engineering" it is typically trial an error. To test out the design we took it to the "stock pond" by the gravel pit. The attached video clip will illustrate how Scott's design truly did "jet".
On the next prototype Scott made some alterations to the keel design and placement of the model rocket engines and balancing of weight.
By this point I could see that this homework stuff he was doing for Mr. Lien was a lot more fun than the English homework I had to do, so I too made my own prototype. My prototype was designed from a 2 liter Caffeine Free Diet Coke bottle (I have to thank Dad for contributing that to the cause), a few pebbles I threw into the bottle to create ballast and a duck taped model rocket engine to the mouth of the bottle. Unfortunately, in the attached video clip you can only see the aftermath of my prototypes maiden voyage. In essence my pebbles for ballast were at the front of the bottle and put it into to a "submarine dive" which only took it 1-2 yards from shore.
Scott's second prototype was quite eventful in another "jet" experience. I guess it just goes to show that Scott really was intended to be in the Air Force!