Helicopters B

Stingray355
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by Stingray355 »

I wasn't really wanting to condemn anyone, I believe people involved in SO at all levels have good intentions.
Our State competition is held at Missouri University in Columbia and it is a pretty good size campus with more than 25,000 students. There are lots of places to fly I think this is a communication problem and I think the solution is mostly local.
As far as the effectiveness of putting venue parameter in the rules, that is fine but I find most people involved with SO have not familiarized themselves with all of the events. I think the various workshops can be effective, particularly if actual devices are demonstrated, but many people can't or don't attend one.

I appreciate your suggestion to better communicate the issues to our State director and others at MU. Clearly what we have done so far is not working as we have similar problems with other build events. I have a suggestion that might be worth considering. How about requesting that the individual national event winners, on a voluntary basis of course, produce a brief video of their teams in action. I understand that not all schools have the resources to do this but many schools do and I bet you could find a volunteer in each build event. You could have the footage play in a slideshow with introductory slides pointing out things like : Wright Stuff airplanes need large open spaces with high ceilings to fly in and Helicopters like high preferably smooth ceilings and then show them flying in a good venue. If the people in charge of running the various competitions could watch a couple of minutes of these devices in action I think the message would be better understood.

Our Gliders have flown in small rooms with 8 ft ceilings for 2 years now and we had Trajectory set up(last time it was a C event) in the same kind of location which would require some kind of a bank shot for many of the catapults to hit certain target distances, not something that we had ever practiced.

If this resource could be assembled and made available it might be helpful and also give some of the best teams in the country the opportunity to show off their skills to the thousands of students , teachers, parents and coaches that will never have the chance to attend the national competition

. I think we could use the same resource to help with recruiting at the school level. I remember the first SO recruiting meeting we attended. They had stacks of the rules for each event arranged on a large table. The coach tried to explain the various events but we ended up taking copies of all 23 event rules home and reading them to try to figure out which events, if any, might be interesting. One of the events we picked was Balloon Launched Glider, but we had never actually seen one and certainly never seen one fly. It would have been so cool if our coach could have played a brief video of one floating/flying for us.
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by jander14indoor »

For a lot of events you can find good examples of high quality runs on youtube. Shouldn't be hard to put together a set of links for show and tell.

examples
helicopters, note how carefully this team picks where they launch. Also note that it spends a lot of time hovering, not locked to the ceiling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhxD_PXgUpI
robocross http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3XL-KMQXts
ELG, nice transition, glide showing a little tail heavy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gUaRZTq87w
Wright Stuff, besides the REALLY good flight at one of the best venues available (Univ of Illinois Armory) you might spot chalker7 and I in the far right background at the beginning processing planes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqt-FsekeqE
etc...

Jeff Anderson
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by Stingray355 »

Thanks I am always looking for videos or info on the different events. I don't think I described my idea very well. I think most of the teams do lots of research and videos and these forums are excellent resources.

I think where the information could be most helpful is with the folks that plan and run the invitationals, regionals and state. Often times these tough jobs are being performed by people with little or no exposure to the individual events that they may be selecting rooms for or actually running. If there was an all inclusive resource that could be readily accessed by individuals based on the responsibilities they have on tournament day it might be helpful.
The people running the tournament need different help than someone running an individual event. A brief video of the build events, lists of specific equipment required and another list of stuff that might be handy to have available. We have had Scrambler weighed on what the ES described as a bathroom scale, it wasn't but it was similar. The same thing has happened with Wright Stuff and Helicopters and in every case the correct equipment could have been provided if people were aware of the specific requirements. I am using weight because it is easy to explain not because there are not other examples that could be mentioned.

So I have decided to do what I can in my part of the world and maybe we can improve communications and understanding on a case by case basis and if teams around the country are having similar problems they can do the same. I would assume that at the national level this is not an issue. I am going to try to draft some people that I know to have similar concerns based on similar experiences and see what we can do in our own backyard to make this better. Thanks again.
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by jander14indoor »

Warning, we're getting off the topic of helicopters here and talking about improving event supervision in general.

I think we're close. I meant those as videos for tournament officials (and anyone else interested too) to better understand the importance of proper sized rooms and that these things built and flown properly are amazing.

Event supervisor training and tournament prep are a hot button to me as a state director in one of the big states. There are more than a dozen invitationals, 15 regions and the state tournament here in Michigan, meaning 1436 event supervisor slots that have to be filled every year. Wow, hadn't done the math before, that's scary large. And I get to hear about the failures, big and small.

So, what do we do now and what can we do better.

There are resources out there for tournament officials, but they can certainly be made better.

Here in Michigan we review the rules each year to come up with a resources list for event supervision each year and share with our regions.

On the national website there is a tournament director's manual that gives a lot of broad help about how to run a good tournament.

Personally, I try to be helpful to anyone who asks, and sometimes those who don't about the flying and robot events I'm most involved in.

And I got the MSO board to agree on ES training sessions via web conference next year, I'll personally be hosting ones for Wright Stuff, Gliders & Robo Cross. I'm envisioning multiple 30 minute sessions with prepared notes, videos, pictures and Q&A. Try to record and make available on-line. Distance is no issue, perhaps we need to invite other states. And perhaps we can share the burden, other states contribute other events. Note, this is not meant to tell folks how to succeed at the events like when I'm mentorying students, but how to RUN the event efficiently and effectively.

If you'd like to participate, PM me.

Jeff Anderson
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by ScienceGuy2000 »

I agree that students should learn to deal with some of the uncertainties that the event venue brings. However, some uncertainties are easier to deal with than the others.

> I've heard folks complain in the wheel events about the floor being different from what they practiced on. Sorry, not specified in the rules, you should have recognized that and practiced on different surfaces.

Check. We tested on different surfaces.

> Robocross. We tell you the playing field has a quarter round in it, we don't tell you under construction that you'll need to cross a quarter round. We also allow a range of surfaces for the play field, we don't tell you you have to deal with that variety under device construction.

Check. We tested all these conditions too and more.

> Does everyone bring at least two GOOD helicopters?

Check. We had multiple.

> And someone mentioned stability. That's something under your control as a competitor

Check. Our helicopters were reasonably stable. In a room with relatively still air, our helicopters didn't spin around too much. Still, a helicopter that touches the ceiling behaves like a spintop and moves laterally in a fairly random fashion. Air current is present in most rooms whether it is from air conditioning, open door, people moving around, etc... so there is a limit on the amount of stability that is really under student control in their designs.

> Is part of the problem that students just aren't taught well to choose their launch point?

Agreed that some teams did not pick their launch point carefully enough. We did study the ceiling carefully and picked the right launch point. Our helicopter did not get stuck, so this is not a case of sour grape. We also knew that we were lucky, as there were several tense moments when our helicopter spun dangerously close to one of the ceiling obstacles. Fortunately, it did not come into contact. We had zero control over that.

The point that I am trying to make is that in the Wheeled Vehicle and RoboCross examples, there were reasonable alternatives that mitigated risks without requiring big compromise on performance. For helicopter, could we have engineered something that avoided most ceiling obstacles? Probably, but it would mean adding countermeasures to the design, which would make the helicopter heavier and probably reduced flight time significantly enough to the point that we would become less competitive.

Building helicopters is like building formula one race car. You are trying to extract every last bit of performance out of the vehicle and things that are not absolutely needed are omitted even though they may help mitigate risks. There are no air bags in those racers, for example.

As Stingray355 pointed out, some of the people who were in charged of picking venue may not necessary fully understand the specific details of a competitive event in order to anticipate the problems that a site creates. When we got to our competition, we were horrified at how ugly the ceiling was. We heard from others that suggestion was made to move the venue. Obviously, the suggestion was ignored. The result: too many helicopters got stuck than it needed be. It was a shame.

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Re: Helicopters B

Post by jander14indoor »

ScienceGuy2000 wrote:<SNIP>
Building helicopters is like building formula one race car. You are trying to extract every last bit of performance out of the vehicle and things that are not absolutely needed are omitted even though they may help mitigate risks. There are no air bags in those racers, for example.
<SNIP>
Actually, let me politely challenge you on that. Maximum performance at the expense of robustness may NOT be the best design solution. Remember this is a team contest made up of multiple events. It might perhaps be better to give up some performance to gain certainty. You might be serving your team better to guarantee 2nd or 3rd with an occasional 1st place vs 1st or 20th being your choices.

Also, Let me point you back to chalker7 and my comments about designing and trimming the helicopter to no touch flying.

Regards,

Jeff Anderson
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by TrueshotBarrage »

Stingray355 wrote:We flew Helicopters for 2 years in C division. Won State both years and were undefeated one year for the entire season so this is not sour grapes. Helicopters was the most unpleasant flying experience we have ever had. I think the rules are written in good faith and with good intentions but out here we flew in some of the worst places you can imagine.

The idea of building to avoid hitting the ceiling sounds like an interesting challenge but our State competition was held in a 16X20 ft classroom with an 8 ft ceiling and a large video projector in the middle of the ceiling and sprinklers and light fixtures everywhere. The entire perimeter of the room was lined with spectators sitting in chairs and sometimes 2 or 3 deep leaving a tiny space to fly from. I am guessing that building to fly below an 8ft ceiling for more than 2 minutes with obstacles everywhere above and below is not what was intended.

Our 2nd year with Helicopters we competed against a very well prepared team from St Louis, who also had the great advantage of having access to Roy White a great guy and likely the best resource for all Science Olympiad flying events in our State. Both of our teams eventually hit the video projector and in both cases it ended our flights well before they should have ended. We flew a couple of seconds longer than they did and we won and they took second. I was happy to be 1st but did not feel good about how we won, I felt bad for both teams and would have preferred to see both fly their best flights and win or lose that way not some random bit of luck based on the awful room we were in.

While this was the worst room we had to fly in , the 2 years were a series of similar poorly chosen venues. I hope that we find a way to better communicate what makes for an acceptable venue for these flying events so that the competitions will reward the teams that have worked hard to prepare.I think the events like Wright Stuff are some of the most challenging and fun events in SO, not to take anything away from the many other great events. . I suspect this is an issue elsewhere.

Looking forward to the return of Wright Stuff next year.
We had an 8 ft ceiling building as well. It was almost like a storage shack. Our helicopter hit one of the lights and fell immediately. Horrible score of 15 seconds.

Also, I would like to add that even though we did worse than we would have hoped for Helicopters, it was an amazingly fun event. I learned a lot about aerodynamics and I sincerely hope they have this event again next year!

Special thanks to jander14indoor and chalker.
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by Bazinga+ »

just wondering, what are the best imes you guys have seen for heli at your regionals/ states? Because im trying to balance my events so our school does well at states, but i also want to medal at states for heli, so i dont want to ignore that event if it needs some more work.
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by AJTheGreat1729 »

Marie Murphy's copter got around 2:35 in room with a 12' ceiling at regionals.
I don't know what happened at states, probably an issue with the armory ceiling.
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Re: Helicopters B

Post by ThaCaptain »

What would a very competitive time be at nationals? I was just wondering
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