Reaching New Heights at the UKROC Regional Finals in Essex

Three student teams, kindly supported by PitPat, took on the challenge of the UKROC Regional Finals on Tuesday at Stow Maries Aerodrome in Essex, showcasing months of engineering, teamwork and preparation in one of the UK’s leading model rocket competitions.

The United Kingdom Rocketry Challenge (UKROC) brings student teams from across the country to design, build and launch model rockets. It inspires the next generation of engineers, scientists and innovators through hands-on aerospace engineering challenges.

Each year, teams are tasked with meeting a specific mission profile, with rules changing annually to encourage creativity, innovation and new engineering approaches. Teams are given a target altitude and flight duration to achieve while ensuring the fragile payload carried by the rocket is safely protected.

This year’s regional finals took place on Tuesday at Stow Maries Aeorodrome in Essex, where three teams from The Perse, ‘Peli-can-fly’, ‘Purple Origin’ and ‘Ka-chow!’, competed in challenging weather conditions. Strong winds throughout the day made launches particularly difficult, testing the teams’ preparation, adaptability and technical precision.

The target for the 2026 challenge was to reach an altitude of 239 metres with a target flight time of 39 seconds. Despite strong winds making it very difficult to achieve these targets, team ‘Peli-can-fly’ came impressively close, achieving an altitude of 236 metres.

Final competition results are still to be confirmed, but the regional finals already proved to be an inspiring showcase of determination, creativity and technical achievement from every team involved.

The ‘Peli-can-fly’ team would also like to thank sponsor PitPat for supporting their journey to the UKROC Regional Finals. Their support played an important role in helping the team participate in the competition and continue developing their engineering skills and ambitions.