Duration

jander14indoor
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Re: Duration

Post by jander14indoor »

Wayne County Regional here in Michigan, top two teams were between 2 min 20 sec and 2 min 30 sec. Event flown in a racquet ball court, ceiling about 25 ft and very smooth. Winning team was one of the National's attendees from Michigan last year, Meads Mill.

Jeff Anderson
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rmp509
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Re: Duration

Post by rmp509 »

won my regionals by a full minute!! second place was around 59 seconds and i was able to get 1:52 on my third run (second run got stuck (cieling horrible) and they let me run it again wen they got it down). time to up the game for states !!! :D
2013 Division B Events

Helicopters
Rotor Egg Drop
Mousetrap Vehicle
Experimental Design
Road Scholar
Shock Value
Boomilever
isaysroar
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Re: Duration

Post by isaysroar »

Finally got a good time! Used to be 40 sec record now a 1 min and 41 sec record! I won 1st for Regionals!! :D
2013
Disease Detectives- 4th
Helicopters- 1st
Road Scholar- 5th
Write it Do it- 2nd
SDCoach
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Re: Duration

Post by SDCoach »

At San Diego regionals, the teams I mentored took 1st, 2nd and 18th. The first place time was 2:37, second was 2:29 and 18th was 1:45. There were 97 teams in our regional, so it is pretty competitive. Unfortunately, we don't get to go to State because we didn't fare as well in the other 22 events. Good luck to all helicopter participants at state and national competition.
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Re: Duration

Post by isaysroar »

Wow! If I may... What design did you use for helicopters?
2013
Disease Detectives- 4th
Helicopters- 1st
Road Scholar- 5th
Write it Do it- 2nd
SDCoach
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Re: Duration

Post by SDCoach »

isaysroar wrote:Wow! If I may... What design did you use for helicopters?
We initially built a Parlor Copter kit and immediately recognized it as junk (bad kit, bad design, bad instructions) but it taught the kids some technique. We then bought a kit from Dave at Freedom Flight and built our next 2 helicopters from that. We built 1 with a normal upper rotor and one with a 4 blade upper rotor. The 4 blade one was built and flown by our team that took 18th (1:45). The Freedom Flight helicopters are great and Dave's instructions taught us a ton. In practice this helicopter flew over 2 minutes but it didn't like the venue where the competition was held. It turns out the 4 blade design isn't good with an angled ceiling. When the helicopter reached the ceiling it tilted to the angle of the ceiling and slid down to the lowest point where it got tangled with the basketball hoops. The teams that took 1st and 2nd used my design (very similar to Freedom Flight 2 blade but with slightly bigger cord and lower pitch). We also built an automatic rubber motor winder that really helped teach the kids about storing and extracting the maximum energy from the rubber. Here is a link to a YouTube video showing the winder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0moeMShiA
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Re: Duration

Post by isaysroar »

Wow thanks for the tips :) I do have to admit we did use the same Parlor kit and it didn't really do us good. The kit was poorly put together and we even had some pieces missing. But we used the Freedom Flight kit at the end but didn't go above and beyond as you did. Then again we only had 2 more days to build and test our helicopter. We were fortunate enough to have a flat ceiling at the competition.

I've noticed that many other teams used the helicopter kits as a tutorial and expanded to their own techniques as oppose to my team who observed pictures into making a custom made helicopter. We later realized if we wanted to stay close to the competition our only route was to use the kits. Which in fact helped a bunch! :D
2013
Disease Detectives- 4th
Helicopters- 1st
Road Scholar- 5th
Write it Do it- 2nd
rmp509
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Re: Duration

Post by rmp509 »

SDCoach wrote:
isaysroar wrote:Wow! If I may... What design did you use for helicopters?
We initially built a Parlor Copter kit and immediately recognized it as junk (bad kit, bad design, bad instructions) but it taught the kids some technique. We then bought a kit from Dave at Freedom Flight and built our next 2 helicopters from that. We built 1 with a normal upper rotor and one with a 4 blade upper rotor. The 4 blade one was built and flown by our team that took 18th (1:45). The Freedom Flight helicopters are great and Dave's instructions taught us a ton. In practice this helicopter flew over 2 minutes but it didn't like the venue where the competition was held. It turns out the 4 blade design isn't good with an angled ceiling. When the helicopter reached the ceiling it tilted to the angle of the ceiling and slid down to the lowest point where it got tangled with the basketball hoops. The teams that took 1st and 2nd used my design (very similar to Freedom Flight 2 blade but with slightly bigger cord and lower pitch). We also built an automatic rubber motor winder that really helped teach the kids about storing and extracting the maximum energy from the rubber. Here is a link to a YouTube video showing the winder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0moeMShiA
hi you said you lowered the pitch and increased your chord. by chord do you mean the motor stick the rubber unwinds in? if so, if you dont mind me asking, how long did you make it. also how much did you decrease the pitch to. I completely understand if you do not want to share the dimensions :D thanks!
2013 Division B Events

Helicopters
Rotor Egg Drop
Mousetrap Vehicle
Experimental Design
Road Scholar
Shock Value
Boomilever
SDCoach
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Re: Duration

Post by SDCoach »

rmp509 wrote:
SDCoach wrote:
isaysroar wrote:Wow! If I may... What design did you use for helicopters?
We initially built a Parlor Copter kit and immediately recognized it as junk (bad kit, bad design, bad instructions) but it taught the kids some technique. We then bought a kit from Dave at Freedom Flight and built our next 2 helicopters from that. We built 1 with a normal upper rotor and one with a 4 blade upper rotor. The 4 blade one was built and flown by our team that took 18th (1:45). The Freedom Flight helicopters are great and Dave's instructions taught us a ton. In practice this helicopter flew over 2 minutes but it didn't like the venue where the competition was held. It turns out the 4 blade design isn't good with an angled ceiling. When the helicopter reached the ceiling it tilted to the angle of the ceiling and slid down to the lowest point where it got tangled with the basketball hoops. The teams that took 1st and 2nd used my design (very similar to Freedom Flight 2 blade but with slightly bigger cord and lower pitch). We also built an automatic rubber motor winder that really helped teach the kids about storing and extracting the maximum energy from the rubber. Here is a link to a YouTube video showing the winder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0moeMShiA
hi you said you lowered the pitch and increased your chord. by chord do you mean the motor stick the rubber unwinds in? if so, if you dont mind me asking, how long did you make it. also how much did you decrease the pitch to. I completely understand if you do not want to share the dimensions :D thanks!
I am not sure that I am using those terms correctly, but when I say pitch and cord I am referring to attributes of the rotors, not the motor stick. By cord, I mean the angle between the upper and lower spars (30 cm long sticks). Freedom Flight uses about 26 degrees and we used about 30 degrees. So our rotors were a little fatter when viewed from above. The pitch is the angle that the rotor wants to "cut" through the air. This is controlled by both the cord and the vertical distance between the upper and lower spars. We used the same vertical distance as Freedom Flight but with the larger chord, had a lower pitch. We built a new fixture to achieve this.
Our motor sticks were long enough to provide a 10" hook-to-hook dimension and we used 10 to 10.5 inch motor loops of .125 rubber for the motors. Nothing magic here. The real key is building light (right at 3 grams) and finding out how to get the most winds on the motor (without it breaking, which happened several times in practice).
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I am in the same camp as jander14indoor about openly sharing knowledge. Good Luck!
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Re: Duration

Post by georgefredbob »

Does anybody have any information on the Wright State Invitational winning times, my team is going to Nationals, and I would like to know what time is to beat at the same court
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