TARC

fred: It got local (washington dc) area and national weekend news coverage... shockie B)

hopefully this year the NAR will have a TLC or Dicovery channel video crew around to follow a few teams as they go from start to finish...

TARC is having a poor turnout for signup this year .... significantly down from last year.

Any idea why? What is the current registration?

Another number I'd be interested in seeing (but won't exist for another 6 months) is how many teams actually make an attempt at qualifying. Last time

2/3 of the teams that entered never flew.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

That is likely the decisive figure.

Help last year's teams get a flight in?

What percentage of teams or schools that flew the first year registered for the second year?

significantly

Less hoopla over Centennial of Flight, for one. Also, I think lots of schools last year underestimated what was involved (hence the relatively low percentage that submitted qualification scores); if that is true then the conversion percentage should be much better this year.

353 Teams from 44 states and the District of Columbia on the web site tonite.

Missing states: Alaska, Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah. Those states alone had 30+ teams and two finalists last year....

another 6

qualifying. Last time

Not sure that is known for sure. 2/3 never submitted qualification forms, but we don't know how many crashed twice, for example. But you're probably right, lots of schools just didn't get a team established to get a rocket built.

--tc

Don't even the DQ forms have to be submitted, so you can be sure someone didn't make more than 2 attempts?

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

Hmmm... I think it was a lot better publicized the first time around... I didn't even realize signups were open for the second contest until I saw the messages about "deadline extended/not many signups yet" here in r.m.r!

(Is the task the same as before: "2 stage double eggloft precision altitude", or is there a different one this time?)

-dave w

Lower altitude. No composite upper stages. Lots of the failures last time were staging composite upper stages. The giding rule for TARC should be KISS.

At 1250', this is easilly within range of a single D12:E9 combo, as long as the rocket isn't overbuilt.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I think they should have made it more difficult. How are the students supposed to learn if they keep removing the challenges? I'm not saying that they should *require* a composite propellant upper stage, but it should be up to the students to decide if they want to use a KISS strategy, or use a more sophisticated approach. I don't want tont to see it made so easy that it is reduced to teams picking a plastic duck out the water to see if the winning number is written on the bottom.

Well that will help lower the team expenses, but the biggest expense for most teams is still transportation and lodging to the flyoffs.

Besides I had the impression that Bunny actually wanted a contest that would actualy push them well beyond thier typical model rocketry experience. He expected and wanted teams to use composit propellant motors. If nothing else, TARC would help legitimize the need for LMR and composite propellant motors for education and research.

The strange thing is that schools seem to have adopted the strategy of entering a very small number of relatively large teams. However, by entering many small teams, they dramaticaly increase the odds of winning awards.

Alan

Oh I think the "flew". They just never were able to submit a qualifying flight. There is a difference :-)

Not as far as I knew... I believe it is up to the team to submit the form, not the NAR mentor or NAR section that the qual flights took place. As such I think you can easily see where a school that crashed and burned would not bother submitting the DQ's.

Fantastic. Just as long as we don't help them design the rocket in any way. As in *ANY* way. You know what I mean?

4 regional flyoffs?

Jerry

(Bob

should be

students

stage,

use a

I think you're underestimating the challenge involved for the typical high school team, even with the new rules. Two thirds of the teams last year didn't submit a qualification score; almost half of the finalists in Virgina DQ'd. In my experience, most TARC team members have previously flown a rocket once or twice, and haven't done staging, clustering, payloads, scratch building, simulation, or experimental design, to say nothing of cutting and gluing balsa, spray painting, or flying in cold weather :-)

You and I, with the experience we have, have an idea of how to approach the problem and what should work. Most teams don't, at least initially: Is a cluster staging to a cluster simpler than a composite staging to a single BP motor? Is building an extremely lightweight airframe simpler than using a cluster in a more robust airframe? Is using the robust payload sections from ASP simpler than using the more frangible egg capsules from Pratt?

We have to hope that the mentors do not reduce the learning experience involved by mentoring "too much". That's a big key in the whole endeavor.

Also, the altitude needed to be lowered to accommodate the smallish fields a lot of schools have available to fly on. A typical school athletic field isn't really big enough to support

1500' launches, especially when the teams are still learning about tilting launch rods. :-)

TARC has to walk a fine line between challenging and impossible. Last year was, IMO, a bit too challenging. We'll see about this year, but I think it is better.

combo, as long as

expense

flyoffs.

That may be true for the finalists, but I wonder if this is true for "most teams"? The 700+ teams that did not make the finals still spent lots of money. Competitive teams spent hundreds of dollars on materials and motors. The initial expenses are not insignificant in these days of crashing budgets.

contest that

This would be achieved by having them all successfully fly and recover an unmodifed Comanche :-)

for LMR

I haven't heard any such political overtones. All I've heard from the very beginning is education, education, education.

strategy of

However, by

Schools are limited by rule to three teams (last year it was two teams). The budget for a single team can easily exceed the discretionary funds for the whole science department!

[Quoted out of original order]

picking

written on

Think about it for a minute....NAR runs A streamer duration contests, for heaven's sake, and I don't think anyone argues that winning _that_ is all luck! TARC is not about learning to stage composite motors, IMO. It is about the essence of aerospace engineering: learning to build a vehicle that can reliably accomplish a specific mission. If teams can do that with a D and an E, more power to them!

FWIW,

--tc

That is not surprising for a huge number of reasons.

Experienced NAR competitors would do likewise. And yet because of the nature of the perfomance index used to determine winners and make awards to the 10 finishers, I'd be happy if the difficulty of the challenge was increased such that only 25 or so teams achieved qualified flights at the flyoffs. Then too, I could see an award system where money was awarded based directly (e.g. decreased from full award for a zero score and decreased proportional to the actual score achieved.) on the performance acheived rather than the rank amoung participating teams.

Well, the mentors introduce another varriable of possible unfairness, all mentors not being equal... Bunny made a comment to the effect that it is really the mentors that are the NAR outreach, perhaps in formong new relationships and requiting new NAR members. To my way of thinking the mentor should do as little "technical mentoring" as possible. ("Just don't blow yourself up.") I see two main beneits of having a mentor. The first is that the mentor may be a real engineer, scientist, or a related professional, and this could be the only exposure that a student has to such people, beyond what they read in SF. Second, just that they have an adult available, and this may make it easier ot secure meeting and flying facilties, and make parents more confident that their student is actualy working on the TARC project and not out drinking at strip clubs or burning down the school. And yes, a mentor can share some tecnical expertise and modeling expererience, but he should allow the students to do thier own research, devise their own strategy and designs, and even make thier own mistakes, even to the point of failure.

There is absolutely no requirement for students to use smallish fields that a lot of schools have available! IF they chose to fly from smallish fields, they may well choose the fly with HPR syle dual deply as well. They certanly have enough excess mass and impulse to ute as they see fit.

Um, on the line beween challenging and imposible, I think the event was too challenging and should be made more impossibe. ;)

Exactly hw much money did those teams spend? I'd really like to know how much teams spent no matter how far they went. I expect that most of the 700+ teams fell apart due to personality conflicts, as well as a lot of other real conflicts. I suspect that a lot of teams registed to beat the deadline, and later found out that they would not be able to get the money needed for the project, or encountered other barriers to thier participation, having nothing at all to due with the actual TARC being too difficult or imposible.

Then you can attribute the "political overtone" above to me. But Bunny did say something to the effect that he was surprised that they could meet the callenge using BP motors

Sorry, I had overlooked that rule.

True, but flying big motors is fun and adds to the educational experience.

Alan

This was a safety decision. The largest failure mode at the finals was aparantly ignition failure of APCP second stages. And probably the most dangerous.

Only if they get that far.

They can, and I'm sure some will use APCP for the first stage. But my recommendation to any team that would listen was always KISS, and the first rule there was stick with the technowlogy you already know. Plus the altimeter they were required to use didn't support electronic staging, so this option required the use of TWO pieces of electronics. If they've already flown 2 stage with electronic ignition of the upper stage sucessfully before, I'd say go for it. But I'd guess that less than 1% of the TAC entrants fell into that category. The rest of them are better off sticking with BP.

Well, they are limited to only 2 teams per school. But yes, a school woth a single team of say 10 kids might be better off entering 2 teams of 5 kids each.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

Don't the failures need to get submitted too, so you can be sure they don't try to make, say 4 official attempts.

And I really do think that a large number of the teams never even made an attempt after registering. Like so many other things, they just never completed the process far enough. Maybe they never even started building. Maybe they ran out of money. Maybe they got a hot date.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

We had hoards of teams come by last year & consumed our entire spring...

I sense in some cases that the time spent on TARC ate into the students standing curriculum leaving the teacher and students in a lurch. Not good for a school with a reputation for producing high-caliber kids...

Another possible cause for reluctance to participate again this year was the lack of payoff to the participants--Nothing hard to show for their efforts other than their pictures and memories. In the PGA events, the field is limited to 144 players about and 70 of them making the cut gets a paycheck.

IMO - Those participating this year are genuinely interested and will have a good time...

JMO, IMO, WAG, arm-chair quarterbacking, etc...

Andy