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Booth had 3:47 seconds if my brain and calculator work correctly. I watched them a number of times in practice and I could swear they got over 4 minutes a few times. They did have a tough first run almost flying it into the ground. Very nice recovery from this for their second run. It made it all the more impressive to me that they were able to adjust and get the desired result.

As far as the team filing for arbitration due to the air conditioners, I was indirectly related to that. As stated, the flying conditions were very good.
Two things led to the filing though.
1. Prior to the competition several practice flights went off without a hitch. The official flights both exhibited extreme issues that were unseen before in Saturday's practice. People watching could not explain this. They also could not talk to the flyers to determine what went wrong.
2. In the stands there was a very cold draft coming down on at least part of the crowd. I am the coach of the team and I was further down in the stands, and I didn't feel anything until I walked back to where the rest of the team was sitting. There really was a cold downdraft there and noise from something. The protest had already been initiated when I got there.

What occurred that caused the odd behavior of the planes was the fact that the motors for two different planes were given to the officials for weighing. When they were handed back to the team, they had not been kept separate, and the wrong motors were handed to the kids. Both flights torqued into the ground, one because it was using a motor that was too thick for it, and the other because we think it had been damaged in a midair collision that happened immediately before our team was supposed to fly their official flights. The other plane's prop was broken off in the collision, as it climbed up into our plane. Ours seemed OK to the kids, but most likely had a problem. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. We had the first flight time of the morning, so the kids just transitioned into competition mode.

The kids had the fortitude to plead their case with the officiants and they were allowed to fly again. With the correct motor, the undamaged plane flew pretty well(13th place) I am very proud of them for being able to make their case and still fly well under all of that pressure. They are not accustomed to being on a big stage like that at the center of attention.

In the end they were told they could fly again due to the air conditioning. They flew a couple practice flights, but their times with the good plane were near the same and they didn't feel that a draft had affected their flights so they decided not to fly again.

This was really a great experience for the kids, and I think the officials and volunteers did a great job.

Thanks,

Tom

did anyone climb to the ceiling? if so who? where from? bonus used? ect
if not how high was the highest flight?

I don't think any planes made it near the top. Maybe some hit the side. Here are a few photos from Nationals to give some perspective.

The toss.

The Armory.

One of our planes.

opening ceremony

talicoa wrote:I don't think any planes made it near the top. Maybe some hit the side. Here are a few photos from Nationals to give some perspective.

I saw a helicopter that got within at least 5 feet of the top.

I saw one or two planes come within about 10 feet from the top, but no closer than that. And Eta, really sucks about the plane. Congratulations on your other medals, and it was great meeting you!

I had to register to express my sincere thank to this forum. I helped coach kids of Marie Murphy on WS. As beginners last year, all the information and tips we learned here (particularly the posts from jander, great thanks) did help our planes tremendously to fly over 5 min this year last Saturday.

As for flying height, our plane flew up to maybe about ~80, almost touching the hanging metal (?) wires from middle skylight. The planes would certainly hit the top if we had used higher pitch prop.
It is hard to be perfect ... in our case, our kids could not find their lubricant bottle after checking in . They had to use whatever left-over lubricant in an old bag they brought in. They told me they put in 1,870 winds (I know, not a lot) in the 0.083" rubber for the 5:04 flight. Great experience for the kids.

Great thanks again for this forum.

Congratulations on a great competition! You broke 5:00, probably the only team in the country this year. Tell us how you guys did it.

Now come to Johnson City for the US Indoor Nationals and fly this plane. No bonus will be used at this competition. There will be other planes at the US Nationals that can break 5:00.

kleet X
SO Coach

A friend of the team took some photos of the plane, here they are:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkleeman/tags/wrightstuff/
Nothing special about the plane, as you guys can see. Kids and coaches spent most the time trimming, collecting data, modifying and back to trimming again in a 20-ft height gym with partial motors, and we mainly worked on trimming wing location, attack angles of wing/stab, prop pitch ... all of those covered in the past posts. If enough folks are interested in a video of the flight last Saturday, I probably can get somebody to upload it somewhere.

I was initially expecting more teams could fly over 5 min... there are so many good flyers out there. Probably not many of them could come to national.

The Marie Murphy team is particularly happy about the best ever overall team results .... 5th place. Considering this team of a small school from 6th to 8th grade (no 9th grade) with about 80 kids in each grade, this is definitely the highlight of their science olympiad history.

Amazing! Geez I have a lot to work on to get there... i maxed out at a little under 3:20 .

Does anybody know what model/kit was used to win? Like Peck-Polymers or Freedom Flights etc?

Somebody should post a video.

MMP's was a freedom flight model. F.F. designed it after JC Booth's national winning plane from last year.