As for the kits issue, I wholeheartedly disagree with the claim that kits take like 10 trim flights with “no middle step.” My team used a kit, and must have trimmed during our team practices for AT LEAST 10 hours, launching hundreds of flights. To compare, I saw many teams at nationals with our sam...

I agree, counting all 5 flights does not allow enough room for mistakes. On the other hand having a data and repeatability event where success is based on 40% of your attempts doesn't seem right either. I think teams should need to be successful more than 50% of the time (to reduce winning by luck) ...

.... Have them build on site.... We had a student who wanted to do just that (just to show off) but never had enough time during the day to do it. Anyway, since the event is a data gathering exercise with the goal of making repeatable results, how about counting 3, 4 or even all 5 of the flights an...

....All teams were not afforded equal opportunity. .... Hello. As the ELG event supervisor, I wanted to offer our perspective. Things we can control: -Air / Blowers We requested the gym A/C to be turned off at 6am. This was miscommunicated somehow within WSU and it took them until 8am to get it tak...

I keep checking on this thread, and I'm not even sure if I want to do this event. So I just want to clear one thing up. Is this event time-consuming? Because honestly, it sounds really fun and interesting, but I don't have much time? Like, if we hold practices once a week for two hours a session, c...

Does anyone know what the winning time was at Ohio State, and how high the ceiling was? Again, always unofficial, but I personally timed the winning team as having 2 37 second flights. The French Field House is probably about 40 feet ish. Can someone else give a more accurate height? The best fligh...

Solar power plane - Why such a large rudder? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5WmnLIN1sw I'll take a stab at a possible answer. "Normal" planes control their flight with flaps on both the wings and stab. Since this plane appears not to have these control surfaces (or smaller ones) the rudd...

I agree, the current rules are written where the goal is to make an "unsafe" device. Anytime you have a 1.5kg device moving at 1m/sec it has enough energy to smash fingers, etc. Add in the fact it is propeller driven and the potential exists for injury. This event, however, is no more risk...

We are considering some tweaks to the rules for next year. One involves simplifying the motor / prop restrictions by just limiting the overall size of the prop. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what 'standard' prop sizes are and what limit we should impose? ... However, the battery is the saf...

I would image Complex machines as the following; •Some sort of test. Likely the computations behind several different simple machines in series (or parallel). Most of this would be straight forward physics. •A lab portion where students would be given the same materials (number of gears, ramps of th...

The complete list of events is also here http://scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4433

Time to combine these topics and lock one of them....

stroudchick wrote:Would anyone like to share some of their ideas for breaking systems? I'm new to the building aspect!

Go to youtube and search for videos by gadgetjim
You will find a video called scrambler braking system which is basically a wing nut style brake.

good luck

We are obviously not the victim, it is in the rules and the kids forgot to remove it. My concern is, if questions are sent to the National office for clarification, why don't they get posted so everyone sees the answer. If an event supervisor follows the rules to the letter, only "batteries, wi...

I feel, if they get enough people asking about it, it must not be very clear. Also not addressed were the status of couplers, LEDs, terminals, connectors, thermistors, and enclosed prohibited items Since most rechargable batteries contain prohibited items, are these acceptable? http://www.electricbi...

Yesterday was the Piqua Regional in Ohio. Mission was run by one of the people who helped write the rules and will help at Nationals. Our schools team was 2nd tiered because of the capaciter on the motor left over from the RC car they removed it from. Yes, it is a prohibited item (from 3.c.) so we s...