You will find the National SO organization is VERY picky about their copyright and objects to posting copies of the rules on websites. Suggest you take down the full rules page and just paraphrase the construction section.
As to design, if you are new, DON'T obsess over that. Its just not that important. Almost any reasonable design built to max size and minimum weight can be trimmed to within 80 or 90 % of national winning times and be a valuable tool to learn good trimming skills, the real core of this event. Oh, and a plane flying to 80-90% of national times will win almost every regional, most states, and probably medal at nationals.
Your first job as an SO coach or student is to get ANY reasonable indoor plane built fast even if not to exact SO rules and FLY LOTS! Your students need to be collecting data, learning how to trim, optimizing the prop rubber combination. After they've built a plane and flown its lot, they'll know what they want for competition and realize that building the plane is trivial. Building from plans will be easy. And once you can do that, your planes won't be $20-$30 each, more like $2 to $3 each, including prop if you build it yourself. These rules were designed NOT to need exotic materials, expensive coverings, etc. As a coach I always cover with the lightest grocery/produce bags I can find to make the point that I can build to 8 gm without anything fancy. And it can be fun using store logos to decorate the wing! Sponsorship?
Experienced flyers will tell you, they key to winning this event is not so much the design as optimizing the rubber/prop combination for maximum energy storage and return. A good plane with that nailed will beat a great plane that hasn't solved that match yet everytime.
Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI
Received on Mon Nov 10 2014 - 06:09:32 CET
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:48 CET