Duration

[wlsguy]

With the couple of hours of the national that I watched, there were at least 3 chinooks that got well over a min which with the 3x bonus would have been 4 to 6 equivalent. So, I think that if the 3x bonus is in effect, all of the medals will go to chinook builders.

I agree. Our chinook easily got 1:30 (before bonus) and we chose not to use it until State because it was so easy to duplicate. If the rules (ever) allow chinooks again, everyone will need to have one to be competitive.

Since the next year challenge is always in the minds of the rules writers, I feel a single rotor may be more difficult (but have never tried it so I really don't know). Another option would be to triple flight times who do not touch anything during the flight (i.e. a true helicopter that hovers). This is extremely difficult and deserves the extra score.

[jander14indoor]

A quick comment on bonus thinking among SO rules writers.

We throw in bonuses to get teams to think outside the box, force people to think about nonconventional solutions. After the first official year of helicopter we got tired of twin rotor coax solutions, every team looked the same. This in spite of a small bonus for a triple rotor. Apparently the cost benefit wasn't worth it. So, we threw in the chinook and made it a large bonus to make sure some teams at least looked at it. We weren't even sure how to do it ourselves, none of us had built a Chinook!

As somewhat expected, crowd sourcing worked, you all figured it out. A good Chinook with a triple bonus could blow away twin rotor coax copters.

Now that its been proven, don't expect THAT bonus to return, at least not at that magnitude.

Instead, look for a single rotor bonus (though not tripled), a triple rotor bonus larger than in the past or some other way to motivate experimentation and thinking. Maybe that single blade rotor idea even!

All that said, I'd focus on building to this years rules, hard to predict what I'll do next week, let alone next year!

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[rfscoach]

Any times available from the Wright State Invite?

[chalker]

Any times available from the Wright State Invite?

There were several teams right around the 2 min mark

[A Person]

Any times available from the Wright State Invite?

There were several teams right around the 2 min mark

How many teams, exactly? Your answer seems very vague.

[chalker]

Any times available from the Wright State Invite?

There were several teams right around the 2 min mark

How many teams, exactly? Your answer seems very vague.

Which was deliberate. I'm not sure yet if we are going to release all the raw results.

[isaysroar]

WOW we've only got ours to go 40 seconds

[Itsanthonguise]

I've gotten 2 minutes, but my times are very inconsistent do you guys have any idea why?

[sparkchaser]

What was the ceiling height on some of these posted times? Our team could try the 24 foot ceiling and loose their helicopter or 9 foot dropped ceiling. We played it safe after seeing two other teams loose their helicopters.

[Skink]

Word on the street is that there have been some wicked times (1:20+) in lower ceilings because the copter somehow hits the ceiling and 'sits' there, if I understand. In a larger ceiling that it won't reach, the same copter will come down faster. I don't entirely understand why that is, but that's what I am told.