Science Olympiad 08 Wright Stuff Nationals
3:27 is an excellent time if, as I understand it, the flyable height
was 23 feet at the 2008 SciOly Wright Stuff nationals. That's close
to the maximum time in that height for a plane that meets the 2008
Wright Stuff rules, in my opinion.
Sorry to hear that the conditions were so challenging. But good
flyers need to be able to adjust.
At our regionals, we have about 30 Wright Stuff teams each year in
Division C (high school). The competition takes place in a
challenging pyramid shaped gym with a suspended central score board
and dangling lights outboard of the scoreboard all around. It is
often a real problem getting all the official flights in before the
event ends at 12:20 p.m. Students have many other events and they
sometimes get bunched up when they go to the Wright Stuff event,
which is a walk-in event (no appointments or scheduled competitor
times).
Our Wright Stuff team is never allowed to practice in that gym ahead
of time, under threat of disqualification. The high school where our
regionals are held does not want to be bothered with students showing
up from other schools on days other than the SciOly official regional
competition day.
On the day of our regional competition practice flights are allowed
up until 8:00 a.m. At that time it is realtively cold (e.g. 60
degrees F.), the doors are open and people are running around,
especially balloon launched glider (BLG)competitors (middle school
kids). Our EC event captain is excellent. A former Wright Stuff state
gold medalist herself, she is fair, really knows the rules, and runs
a tight, organized competition. She makes a determination that all
flyers will not get their two official flights in if there are
practice flights after 8:00 a.m, whether they be trim flights or full
flights. Therefore no flights, except official flights, are allowed
after 8:00 a.m. at our regionals. But everyone knows this in advance.
So it is an equal playing field, except, perhaps, for the Wright
Stuff team that goes to that high school. But that high school team
is not very good in Wright Stuff anyway.
So our Wright Stuff team never risked practice flights before 8:00
a.m. under those dangerous conditions. They wouldn't tell you much
anyway, as your plane should already be well trimmed. Instead, they
adopted a different strategy. The first offical flight was a very
conservative flight, sometimes no higher than half the ceiling height
to gauge the rate of climb under the present ambient conditions,
usually close to 80 degrees F. by that time, and with upwards
convection due to many spectators, and sometimes drift.
Then, using data from flight logs, and scaling the results, the
rubber motor is wound to the correct torque for a second official no-
touch flight close to the ceilng.
Our Wright Stuff teams' desire has always been to do one test flight
with a partial motor just before our official flights, to gauge the
rate of climb and the max height reached by the plane, but they have
never been afforded that luxury at regionals or at the state finals.
Weather can affect the rubber motors and cause them to break when
they otherwise wouldn't. If you observe lots of rubber motor breakage
during winding by other competitors, wind more conservatively. Either
that, or bring plenty of extra rubber motors (lubed afte weigh-in)
and be prepared to retrieve them and wind quickly before your 8
minutes have expired. Sometimes rubber motor breakage can be
attributed to inadequate lubrication of the rubber motor.
Our old time mentors have often told our WS team that if they are not
breaking their rubber motors, they are not winding enough.
Our team built their own planes for Science Olympiad Wright Stuff
competition using their own designs but borrowing concepts from
mentors Cezar Banks and John Hutchison. They did not build the
Freedom Flight or Ray Harlan kits, although good results can be
achieved with those kits. Our team beat all the kit planes in our
2008 regionals and state finals. I will post a picture in this Group
of one of their planes.
Received on Thu Jun 05 2008 - 16:14:25 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:45 CET