Flying Bird B/C [Trial]

[chalker]

Has it been confirmed that the 2010 rules are this year's rules too? I mean, they're on Soinc and they're the only rules we can find, but it'd be good if we could know for sure.

The rules should be the ones posted on the soinc.org website: http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... 09%20C.pdf

[HappySciencePie]

Okay, thanks!

I found a site with ornithopter designs. Apparently it's very aware of Science Olympiad, because four of the designs "qualify for the Science Olympiad flying bird event." http://www.ornithopter.org/store/so.html

[iYOA]

yea thats because the owner of the site wrote the rules for this event (i think)

[fcfirewings5]

What exactly is this event?

[Frogger4907]

http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... 09%20C.pdf

[jander14indoor]

Well, the rules haved been written by many people, not just the owner of that site (if they were involved at all, this has been a NC driven event, that site owner is out of NY).

As to having four qualifying designs, note, three only vary by color. And the rules are VERY open as to requirements, they only have to weigh 3 gm, no other criteria except materials. No span limit, etc. And qualifying doesn't mean competitive. The min weight is 3 gm and these weigh 1/4 oz or more, about 7-8 gm. ALL flying events are strongly degraded by excess weight, don't expect those weights to be to be competitive!!

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[quizbowl]

What times seem competitive?

[chalker7]

What times seem competitive?

That's really hard to say. It really hasn't been tested very much so far.
As Jeff said above these rules are incredibly open but ornithropters are also incredibly difficult to build. The national record is a little bit more than 20 minutes, but that ornithropter weighed probably 1.5 grams and was flown and built by one of the best flyers in the country. I imagine a couple of teams will be able to get over 5 minutes with these specs if they dedicate a lot of time to building and practicing before nationals. However, I also imagine the vast majority of teams will be below 15 seconds since it is just such a challenging event. I think in North Carolina years past the winners were in the 30-45s range.

[yogoperson]

What times seem competitive?

That's really hard to say. It really hasn't been tested very much so far.
As Jeff said above these rules are incredibly open but ornithropters are also incredibly difficult to build. The national record is a little bit more than 20 minutes, but that ornithropter weighed probably 1.5 grams and was flown and built by one of the best flyers in the country. I imagine a couple of teams will be able to get over 5 minutes with these specs if they dedicate a lot of time to building and practicing before nationals. However, I also imagine the vast majority of teams will be below 15 seconds since it is just such a challenging event. I think in North Carolina years past the winners were in the 30-45s range.

That's going to be hard to beat, a challenge. XD

EDIT:
I heard that you can't get a medal for this event, is that true? I know for sure that trial events won't count towards the team overall score, though.

[ivomitrainbows]

If anyone is curious, I am doing this event with HappySciencePie and for our first ornithopter, we built one of the ones off of the ornithopter website (the black bird). It weighed 4.3 gm I believe. I don't know about the others, but both the black bird and the phoenix (which is the same design as the black bird, just different colors) shouldn't be crazy heavy.