OSU Helicopters (Petition Against Field House)

[Skink]

I have an event to supervise tomorrow and should be going to sleep, but I wanted to interject. ThatRoboGuy, welcome to scioly! First, I'd encourage you to reread what the folks above have written because they've clearly and nicely outlined why your issue is as it is. But, I wanted to offer a brief scenario, if further illustration helps. Hypothetically, your or a team whose run you are spectating's flight is disrupted by some means to which you allude. Then what? Nothing! Section 4.a. in the rules speaks to the topic at hand and is a suggestion for the ideal flight environment which, in many cases, is not practical. In other words, the event is given the best space it can from the resources available to the folks running the tournament. The folks above noted that. If your or another's flight is affected by the environment, is a re-flight given to make up for it? No, of course not. Re-flights would occur in cases of noted testing disturbances, say, 4.m. in the rules or legitimate goofs on part of the event supervisor or timers.

Next, let's take what you say to the extreme. Suppose a perfect fight environment is needed, and the folks behind the tournament (let's say it's you) intend to run the event not as a spectator event. The university (or wherever the tournament is held) does not offer to you such a room. What do you do? Do you opt to not run the event or take the best choice available? Legal but not ideal is far better than not running the event at all!

Lastly, while I may be exposing my ignorance, I surmise that a team who can barely break 30sec is not going to be significantly improved to beat the top competitive teams such that an upset occurs. And, even if it did, that's fair game. What's unfair to everyone is fair to everyone. After all, perfect testing environments are mostly theoretical, anyway. I see you're a Metric Mastery person. If we wanted to apply the same principles to that event, in order to be fair, each team would have to do the stations for estimation and measurement at the same time, in the same order, and all in different rooms. And did I mention that they should rotate at the same speed, too? We wouldn't want one team to begin reading the sixth station before the others.
...you see what I'm getting at with the silly example. It's nice in theory but totally impractical! And more events than you'd realize are affected by like issues of sorts. Do you know how many bad egg drop drop points I've seen in the past two seasons (including, uh, 'makeshift' ones)? They have to, for your sake, do the best with what they have. Anyway, good luck at the State tournament.

[gneissisnice]

I admit that I don't know much about helicopters (or any building events, really), but it seems like the main problem in this case isn't that the helicopters get stuck, but that the timer keeps running.

Like others have said, it's very hard to get a perfect environment for flying the helicopters, and many venues are not ideal for the event. Every team has the same disadvantage, so it's fair. But why keep the timer running if the helicopter gets stuck? Why not just have the supervisor stop the clock when it gets stuck and then resume it once it's freed? That seems a lot fairer to me than letting a helicopter get a 5 minute time that it didn't deserve.

[chalker7]

Because it is sometimes really hard to determine when one is "stuck" vs. "flying." Moreover, there is often disagreement between the timers, competitors and spectators as to when the clock should stop which results in controversy (like what you see on this forum.)

[ThatRoboGuy]

I have an event to supervise tomorrow and should be going to sleep, but I wanted to interject. ThatRoboGuy, welcome to scioly! First, I'd encourage you to reread what the folks above have written because they've clearly and nicely outlined why your issue is as it is.

Slightly offended by your first few sentences.



Let me just take on one approach; the difficulty of determining whether or not a helicopter's rotor is spinning.

A lot of people don't understand how helicopters works, and that is perfectly understandable. There's a lot of time spent just designing and going over the physics of the event. With the Field House's 48 foot ceiling, it's almost impossible to even tell if the helicopters rotors are spinning. You see, lots of helicopters are designed with the upper and lower rotors spinning independently of the motor shaft. This means that if the top rotor gets stuck on a wire, the lower rotor can keep spinning freely of the upper rotor. This makes it look like the helicopter is supporting itself (assuming you can see it spinning).

[robotman]

This is addressed to this thread as a whole, and should not be read as a condemnation of either side of this argument. This is an official position of Scioly.org, I have no personal opinion on the matter being discussed.

This thread is starting to get out of hand, everyone needs to take a step back, away from this thread,and take a deep breath. Both sides have aired their opinion and proposed solutions, continued argument in either direction is merely going to raise tempers and cause more anguish or dislike among those involved.

Take some time to consider each others points, and attempt to understand where the other is coming from. It is not good to start letting emotions take over, because this will turn into a flame war, at which point this thread will be locked. The point of this forum is to foster discussion, not attack people for their ideas, or beliefs

Some things to consider:

• Everyone is right
• Everyone is wrong
• Science Olympiad in its simplest idea is just a game, don't let it become a reason to hate someone, or someone's opinions.
• Argue the ideas not the people, there should be no personal attacks.
• Take arguments as a punch to the idea, not to your person, remember its not a personal attack.
• End all angry posts with cute kittens (It makes everyone feel better).

Everyone stay friendly.

[Unome]

3) If there was any state that I would trust to make everything as fair as possible to every team, it would be Ohio. You guys take for granted how efficiently and overall just how well Ohio runs its state tournament. If you had to compete at, say, a smaller state like Oklahoma or Iowa or even like Kansas, you'd probably be having fits. (Plug for Kansas: It is a great tournament by the way. They do a good job)

Agreed. Georgia is one of the more competitive states, but the tournament is not really that great. The awards ceremony was delayed by about two hours, and the proctor for Entomology was in Australia during the competition. (But the guy that wrote the Heredity test was great, so it's not all bad)

[Astroknight]

3) If there was any state that I would trust to make everything as fair as possible to every team, it would be Ohio. You guys take for granted how efficiently and overall just how well Ohio runs its state tournament. If you had to compete at, say, a smaller state like Oklahoma or Iowa or even like Kansas, you'd probably be having fits. (Plug for Kansas: It is a great tournament by the way. They do a good job)

Agreed. Georgia is one of the more competitive states, but the tournament is not really that great. The awards ceremony was delayed by about two hours, and the proctor for Entomology was in Australia during the competition. (But the guy that wrote the Heredity test was great, so it's not all bad)

Same here in Tennessee. It's a competitive state, but the state tournament is known for reusing tests from the year before and/or not using original tests. The awards ceremony has been in an auditorium where not everyone can fit, but thankfully there was split awards this year, so it was OK (this problem will be solved next year as the awards ceremony is being moved).

[Toms_42]

This reminds me of 2011 bottle rockets. Our (awful) rocket landed on a roof, and the timers kept running until it slowly rolled off. We got third, which is acutally fairly sad that our rocket was so bad it STILL didn't win even with the added 15-30 seconds on that roof.