Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

calgoddard
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

Cammaster -

You asked:

"So how is this NOT like Wright Stuff?"

The WS and the Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) trial event are similar in that they are both a competition in which student built rubber powered airplanes are flown and teams are ranked based on the longest of two official flights.

Here are the principal differences between the events:

1. RPA places no restrictions on the configuration of the airplanes, stimulating creativity and varying the designs flown at the competition. Query, what is the justification in the WS rules for limiting the design to a monoplane?

2. RPA eliminates the tedious and risky measuring of wing span, wing chord, stab span, stab chord and prop diameter.

3. RPA eliminates the need to measure the weight of the rubber motors and to monitor students during the competition to make sure that students do not swap in heavier rubber motors later on. It also challenges the students to determine the optimum rubber motor weight for their design.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by chalker7 »

Hi All,
We appear to have touched a nerve. The central issue here is one which pops up from time to time, and that is the intersection between Science Olympiad and competitive free flight modeling. Many of our best mentors, supervisors and tournament volunteers come from the free flight community and often lament the restrictions placed on any of the flying events in Science Olympiad. They want more freedom, more variety of designs and events that are similar to what they are used to in the FAI or AMA. While I don't mean to accuse calgoddard of anything, I suspect his very positive intentions come from this place.

That said, Science Olympiad is not the AMA nor FAI and its events will never mirror those organizations for a wide variety of reasons. Primarily, in SO competitions we have to go through a very high volume of teams in a very limited/structured amount of time and we have to provide a competition for an incredibly wide array of skill levels and amounts of experience.
The first issue is 100% related to time and the structure of SO as a competition. That issue is never going away and essentially requires us to make rules in which no team can go over 5 minutes at the national tournament, with the vast majority below 3 minutes. This is where the dimensional restrictions, monoplane restrictions, ban on VP props and most critically, rubber mass restrictions come into play. They are both design challenges for the students and performance limiters to make the competition viable.

The second issue is a bit trickier, as we have teams showing up with Guillows airplanes they built that morning competing against teams who have been building airplanes for years and are mentored by individuals with decades of competitive AMA/FAI experience. And yes, we do have a lot of restrictions in place that hold back those upper tier teams, but honestly we have a much larger group at the lower end who are just getting started. As such, we write rules primarily focused on these entry level teams. The dimensional restrictions are partly to give teams some idea of what they should build. Build a wing to dimension, buy a prop approximately the right size and get it close to weight and you should be able to at least fly it (plus, if you read the rules, you should know a slot together Guillows kit won't be competitive.)

All of that is to say, flip your thinking. We aren't limiting the next Burt Rutan. We're finding the next Burt Rutan and encouraging him to build his first airplane. Once he does that and hits the limits of SO, we actively want him to move beyond our competition and do greater things in other realms. This same principle applies in every event. Astronomy doesn't cover every topic since it isn't set up to challenge the next Neil deGrase Tyson, it's intentionally accessible so someone who has never studied Astronomy might find some inspiration to do that professionally.

Specific responses to previous questions/statements:
1. RPA places no restrictions on the configuration of the airplanes, stimulating creativity and varying the designs flown at the competition. Query, what is the justification in the WS rules for limiting the design to a monoplane?
It's to limit flight time.
2. RPA eliminates the tedious and risky measuring of wing span, wing chord, stab span, stab chord and prop diameter.
But introduces a new, potentially riskier and less precise measurement. How do you verify the plane perfectly fits in the box? By closing it? If it's just a little bit over and the plane gets crushed, how do you reconcile that?
3. RPA eliminates the need to measure the weight of the rubber motors and to monitor students during the competition to make sure that students do not swap in heavier rubber motors later on. It also challenges the students to determine the optimum rubber motor weight for their design.
I get this complaint and yes, it is a pain in the butt for the supervisors, but it is without question the best method we've found to control flight times. I agree finding the optimal weight is a positive challenge (and is the reason there is no limit in Helicopters) but we have thus far been unable to predict how long flights will go without a mass limit in Wright Stuff. As an example, I remember about 10 years ago at an AMA competition, someone broke 10 minutes on an unlimited rubber Science Olympiad flight when the longest flight I saw that year in SO competition was ~4 minutes. We just can't have that variability for a tournament.

Hope that helps a bit
National event supervisor - Wright Stuff, Helicopters
Hawaii State Director
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

Thanks for reading my posts and thinking about these issues. I believe that the dialogue on this thread has been constructive.

The goals of the Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) trial event are to promote creativity of design and simplify check-in. See

http://www.socalstatescioly.org/downloa ... planeC.pdf

In contrast, FAI and AMA flying events have strict rules and check-in delays are not an issue.

The Wright Stuff (WS) rule limiting the configuration of the model airplane to a monoplane does not shorten flight times. To the best of my knowledge, all current indoor FAI and AMA world records were set with monoplanes.

The primary factor that limits flight times indoors is the specified minimum weight of the model. The RPA rules specify a relatively high 5 gram minimum weight for a relatively small model.

Flight times indoors are also limited by the flyable height at the competition venue. Most WS competitions are held in middle school (MS) and high school (HS) gyms with relatively low ceiling heights. If there is a concern about infrequent long flights at Nationals then the WS competition should not be held in venues with high ceilings, like the Armory at the University of Illinois and the Cook Pavilion at the University of Nebraska.

Yes, flight times can be limited by imposing a maximum on the weight of the rubber motor. However, there are easier ways to limit flight times that do not require parent volunteers to weigh a bunch of rubber motors for each team and then watch to make sure that students don’t clandestinely swap in a heavier rubber motor when they start winding. Have you considered the fact that digital scales might give inaccurate measurements due to static charge in the rubber motor?

The persistent WS rule requiring trimming of commercial plastic props that impairs their performance is unnecessary. It also confuses students as to what pitch, diameter and blade shape is aerodynamically optimum. This year some students cut down the broad blade Ikara prop to meet the 14 cm maximum diameter limit, and then wondered why their airplanes did not fly as long as they thought they should have. Even if they knew that the cut-down Ikara prop should be re-pitched that has proven to be a very difficult task to accomplish for expert adult builders and fliers with many years of experience.

Very few students will break two minutes under the RPA rules. It would be a challenge for an expert adult flier to break three minutes in a typical MS or HS gym under the RPA rules. Please post a YouTube video if you are able to do it. If so, you should progress to competition in the FAI indoor F1D, F1L and/or F1M events.

Rule 4.e. of the RPA trial event specifies a simple, safe and quick test for size conformance of the model airplanes. Please take the time to read it. To summarize, the student places the airplane in the FedEx box, the sealing flaps are not closed, and a ruler is slid over the end of the box to show it does not contact the airplane. The student then tips the box to show that the airplane will slide out of the box. If a student attempts to cram an over-size model airplane into the FedEx box, he or she bears the responsibility if the model breaks. Time and time again I have seen cumbersome cardboard measuring templates held by parent volunteers at WS competitions hang up on the wing and stab. How happy do you think students are when the delicate balsa wood spars of their WS airplanes are broken by adult strangers at check-in?

Most students will likely transport their RPA model airplanes in FedEx boxes, greatly reducing the chances that they will be damaged. Too many times I have seen WS airplanes not being transported in boxes, or sitting upright in banker’s boxes with the tail boom and stab hanging out and waiting to be inadvertently snagged and broken by someone passing by.

There is no need to specify multiple dimensional restrictions in the flying event rules as guides for novice builders. If they choose to do so, they can simply build one of the commercial kits with an optimal design that Jeff Anderson says would readily be produced in response to formal adoption of the RPA rules. Or they can refer to a likely post on this web site giving sample dimensions.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

The edit function on this web site seems to have disappeared. I want to correct my previous post. Chalker, not Jeff Anderson, indicated that a kit with an optimal design under the RPA rules would become commercially available.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by wlsguy »

Confirming all of the unanswered questions about flight times and overall event viability is the purpose of trial events. I think running the event at the So Cal competition (arguably one of the areas with more competitive fliers) will provide some of the needed data. I look forward to the report of the results. (flight times, check in issues, participant feedback, etc). Thanks
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

This is updated information for the Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) trial event.

It will take place as part of the Southern California State Science Olympiad competition being held on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California.

The RPA event will be held at the Polytechnic School - Scott gym across the street from Caltech from 1:35 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. The dimensions of that gym are 25 m x 32 m x 9 m high.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

This is a Division C event.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

The size conformance test under the Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) trial event rules requires that each airplane fit within a so-called "Federal Express Large" box. The interior dimensions of that box are specified in the rules.

I just picked up two more Federal Express Large boxes for free at a nearby PostalAnnex store. The clerk was happy to give them away.

There are approximately 300 PostalAnnex stores nationwide.

There are probably many more Federal Express stores nationwide where its boxes are given away for free.

I did not see any legal restrictions on the Federal Express web site that preclude obtaining these boxes for holding model airplanes without shipping the airplanes. Some of these boxes that are used for competing in the RPA event will eventually be used for shipping via Federal Express, in which case the company will receive a fee.

Regardless, corporate executives at Federal Express would probably consider the remaining boxes used by RPA competitors to be a charitable contribution towards STEM education.

Imagine the free advertising Federal Express would get from thousands of its boxes being carried by students around SciOly competitions with its large, distintively colored, trademark and logo emblazened on the same.

Which raises the possibility of approaching Federal Express to ask for a donation to the National SciOly organization. $25K is "chump change" to Federal Express. It would be possible to use free boxes from UPS, USPS, etc. as an alternative to the Federal Express Large box.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

The Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) trial event went smoothly yesterday at the 2017 SoCal Science Olympiad state finals held at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Only thirteen team flew in the event since the results of the competition did not count toward the overall team standings. Check-in was greatly simplified compared to Wright Stuff. The designs were considerably more varied than in a typical Wright Stuff competition. For example, one team built two airplanes that loaded sideways into the FedEx Large box so that they could have high aspect ratio wings with almost a 17 inch span.

The winning time was approximately 69 seconds. The winning model appeared to be a 2017 FFM kit cut down to fit within the FedEx Large box.

It was obvious that most, if not all, of the airplanes were built at the last minute due to the late publication of the trial event rules. If RPA were a normal SciOly event I would expect many more teams to exceed 60 seconds in a typical high school gym and a few teams to possibly exceed 120 seconds.
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Re: Rubber Powered Airplane - SO trial event

Post by calgoddard »

I forgot to mention that I received many complements about the rules of this trial event leading up the the Rubber Powered Airplane (RPA) event that was conducted at the SoCal SciOly State finals at Caltech on April 8, 2017.

Coaches, parents and students particularly pointed out that they liked easing the design restrictions, simplifying the size measurement of the models, and eliminating the weight limit on the rubber motors. Most people who commented had experience with the Wright Stuff event and preferred the RPA rules.

I received no negative comments at the trial event about the RPA rules.

If you read my prior posts, I think I carefully and thoughtfully countered the few criticisms that were posted in connection with this topic. For example, the criticism about potential damage to a model from being crammed into the box clearly did not take into consideration the very clear wording of Rule 4.e.
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