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So you cut your wood from sheets of balsa - what did you use to get straight pieces of specific size? Also - how do u measure tensile strength? I thought there was a correlation between density and TS, but apparently not. We cut our pieces out of board with a small table saw. I believe you can buy ...

OK, let's try to put these two issues to rest so that the thread can return to discussing robots and strategies: 1. Impound: I have been judging/running impound events since 1997 at the Regional, State and National levels. I've been involved with the vehicle events (wheeled vehicle/scrambler/batter...

The rules regarding no recharging stations being available for students were in force last year (Competition, #4). In New York, we've clarified that no recharging facilities would be available since 2007, and in 4 C Division State Competitions, 2 B Division State Competitions, and 1 National Tourna...

Ive always wondered - is there a significant variance of characteristics in a single stick of balsa - for example, can the density in a 3ft x 1/4 in x 1/4 in stick of balsa be significantly different from region to region? Absolutely! We have found that the density range in a single stick of balsa ...

The range of characteristics of balsa is wider than any other wood. Balsa is actually considered to be a hardwood, but it's density ranges from 24 lbs/ft cu to well below 4 lbs/ft cu. Some balsa is as soft as a sponge while other pieces can be denser and stiffer than bass. The range in important str...

Our bot needs new batteries after every run, will there be enough time to replace them and how many batteries would we need? Could we bring a battery powered charger and recharge our batteries with that? The rules mention only that the only batteries that can be impounded are spares for the bot, but...

Sorry for the double post but what are people planning to do about recharging their batteries at competition. The rules specifically state that no charging facilities will be provided by the supervisor, which I take to mean that no power will be available for chargers, so how do we recharge batterie...

Did anyone else have trouble using 2.4 at states last year? We had some serious interference against Vex bots. Kind of a shame... we had the lamest Vexer take out our custom built bot last year. It is hard to imagine what would cause interference with a Spektrum DX5 system. That system is both spre...

I already posted something about this elsewhere, but I think the balloon raising the sign task is a bad idea. We all saw years ago how random the results of balloon race were. Generally the teams with the best builders and lab event performances did no better (often worse) then those who were poor a...

Well it's pretty clear that this year the rules makers didn't want a repeat of a bunch of Mission Possible devices separated by tenths of points in score. By putting in a mechanical (sand) timer they have made it much less likely that many teams will finish very close in score. Of course the balloon...