Event Horror Stories

[MoMoney$$$;)0)]

Have you ever done something truly horrific during an event that you would like to share about? No this is not what the Invitational or the Event Supervisor did wrong, but what YOU have done wrong during an event.

[MoMoney$$$;)0)]

I'll start this off with one of my most disappointing events. During my first year of battery buggy, I rewired my Buggy the night before to cut off any excess wires, and make the connections stronger etc. However, during my soldering I didn't realize that I had made a short circuit, but it was late at night and I didn't bother checking it. Let's fast forward to next morning 7:50 before impound; I realize that when I turn it on it's not running, and I realize I did something wrong. Next thing I know I recut my wires, and impound it with some electrical tape, without attaching the wires again. Let's fast forward again to my competion time; I am hustling to get my wires attached at the right points, and with 5 seconds left I say to have an official run; and next thing I know my battery buggy motor is smoking, and the Event Supervisors are VERY concerned. I was dissapointed in myself, due to how much time I had towards it and how I got tiered because of my failure. I guess now I learned my lesson.

[Umaroth]

Brought in a broken cable to Detector Building at Las Vegas Invite and the code wouldn't upload. Still somehow managed to get 3rd.

Not super horrific, but also Battery Buggy story. At nats my partner put the cans 17.5 cm apart and I thought it was too risky so I told him to put them at 18 cm. The run definitely could've made the 17.5 by a lot, but I didn't think much of it until later when the proctor posted the raw scores for the top 10. We had gotten 3rd, but we lost to Solon by 0.034 points, so if I didn't tell my partner to move the cans we would've gotten 2nd. Still no regrets, wouldn't have affected our team placement and I prefer to be safe than sorry, but still kind of sad.

[SilverBreeze]

Thought the Mission end task flag had to be 60x60 cm instead of 60 sq. cm... This is why I don't do builds anymore.

[Booknerd]

I was flying our ELG the day before our competition and the whole thing snapped in half. I panicked and reglued it together, even though it added more weight and it didn't glide well. Even so, we still got third, so I was happy. I'll never forget the sound of the glider snapping though...

[BennyTheJett]

I was walking into Dynamic Planet at an invite my team goes to, and my partner asked me where our binder was. I didn't have it and she didn't either. As it turns out I had left the binder at home, and so we took the test without any notes at all. It worked out for us (we still won), but I was sure panicking at awards!

[AlfWeg]

Going with my 'gut' feeling in thermo instead of graphs.

[builderguy135]

Forgetting that you set your rudder on your Wright Stuff plane to turn left, yet offsetting the wing to turn right.

[SilverBreeze]

Accidentally cutting myself when working on Towers and leaving a nice smear of blood on the balsa... it blends in surprisingly well. Don't worry, I promptly (accidentally) staunched the bleeding with a layer of glue...

Some non-build horror stories...
Not communicating with your partner and realizing outside the door of the event room that you each thought the other was going to print the RFTS cheatsheet... eh, it went all right, since we were only doing it for fun.

I dropped my Orni binder with the rings open once...

Not really a horror story, but still funny: between reaching for pages of the test/binder, switching pencils with Umaroth during DP without realizing until the end of the block...

[theskyistillred]

Forgetting that you set your rudder on your Wright Stuff plane to turn left, yet offsetting the wing to turn right.

^how north got 5th at soup instead of 4th