Hand Load or Auto Load?

[MattH2018]

If anyone would like to add how their State deals with this, we would love to know... I'll Start:

OHIO - Hand Load

New York was going to be autoload, but they only had one hopper and they wanted to run 2 set ups at once, so we hand loaded

[Balsa Man]

Colorado - autoload

[Dohnnovan]

Northern California - Autoload

[Balsa Man]

Does anyone know what they plan to do at Nationals??
One would hope/presume autoload for both divisions....(there was a year w/ booms where B had to hand load while C autoloaded)....

[Juanyjose]

Missouri did auto load, and I think that might be why everyone did so bad. Pretty much everyone's tower underperformed: Pembroke got 200 points less than what I expected, Wydown got 1/2 as much (800 points less, although that might have multiple causes) and Ladue got less than 800, when they got ~1100 at regionals. Most of the towers had scores of less than 1500, which is pretty bad even for a fairly uncompetitive state.

I don't think it was because of the fact it was auto load, but because all the sand fell to the front of the bucket, where it couldn't really be effectively stabilized. Would that affect the tower, or was it just a coincidence. Any thoughts?

[bernard]

Missouri did auto load, and I think that might be why everyone did so bad. Pretty much everyone's tower underperformed: Pembroke got 200 points less than what I expected, Wydown got 1/2 as much (800 points less, although that might have multiple causes) and Ladue got less than 800, when they got ~1100 at regionals. Most of the towers had scores of less than 1500, which is pretty bad even for a fairly uncompetitive state.

I don't think it was because of the fact it was auto load, but because all the sand fell to the front of the bucket, where it couldn't really be effectively stabilized. Would that affect the tower, or was it just a coincidence. Any thoughts?

Pouring sand in a bucket hanging freely from a chain acts as a point load, so sand can be loaded anywhere in the bucket. If the chain is rigid to the point that the bucket tilting causes torque in the loading block, then it will apply load unevenly.

[Alex-RCHS]

Would you guys recommend autoloading fast or slow? Or maybe slow at the beginning, then faster?

[Unome]

Or maybe slow at the beginning, then faster?

I would recommend exactly this (and likely most others would agree).

[Balsa Man]

Or maybe slow at the beginning, then faster?

I would recommend exactly this (and likely most others would agree).

Yup, correct. There's been some previous discussion of this, but we've gotten so many threads, so many pages to dig through to find info. Time under load becomes a real factor when you're getting near the limits of your tower. Once its settled in with a kg or two load on it, you want to get the rest on as quickly as possible.

[Random Human]

Would you guys recommend autoloading fast or slow? Or maybe slow at the beginning, then faster?

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