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trajectoryroxs wrote:Okay, I have a question about States targets for Division B, the targets will be at a half a meter ground and half a meter up right? In the rules it says "1 meter or lower" which is confusing me....

~ Trajectoryroxs

The target can be anywhere from 2m to 8m at 1/2 meter increments like 2.5m or 6.5m. The close target can be anywhere from 10cm to 1m off the ground in 10cm increments. So the close target could be @ 3.5m and 70cm off the ground and the far target could be 6m.

Yes, the target can be placed at half meter intervals from 2-8 meters. 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5...
The height can be in 10cm increments. .1, .2, .3, .4...

Actually, I believe the height is in 1cm increments.

Yep, 10 cm increments was last year's rules. Careful that you are looking at the right ones.

At NY States yesterday, the targets were at 9.5 m and 3.5 m, with the close target 1.4 m off the ground.

We had managed to hit 9.5 m consistently in practice (our device has had problems with not getting the full distance, but we were under the impression that we had pretty much solved them), but when we put our device on that increment in the event, it went maybe 8.9 m at most; we didn't manage to hit the far target.

On the other hand, we were very worried about the close target, because in the process of getting the full distance, we had compromised our ability to hit shorter distances. We had also never specifically tested anything off the ground (we had a lot of problems finding space and time to test... there aren't many places in our school district with sufficiently high ceilings lol), so I attempted to construct the parabola of a shot at certain increments knowing only the angle of release and the distance traveled (clearly not very accurate). However, somehow all this worked out, and we managed to get a good shot on the close target- maybe 20 cm at most.

In other words, we still don't understand what the heck we're doing.
(We're completely rebuilding before Nationals, because we finally realized that no matter what we've tried, there are always insurmountable problems with this design. Every time we fix one of them, another one is created.)

Well, I didn't feel like looking up the rules and the last post said that, so I guess you can't believe everything you see here. I thought it was .01 anyway.

Phenylethylamine wrote:At NY States yesterday, the targets were at 9.5 m and 3.5 m, with the close target 1.4 m off the ground.

We had managed to hit 9.5 m consistently in practice (our device has had problems with not getting the full distance, but we were under the impression that we had pretty much solved them), but when we put our device on that increment in the event, it went maybe 8.9 m at most; we didn't manage to hit the far target.

On the other hand, we were very worried about the close target, because in the process of getting the full distance, we had compromised our ability to hit shorter distances. We had also never specifically tested anything off the ground (we had a lot of problems finding space and time to test... there aren't many places in our school district with sufficiently high ceilings lol), so I attempted to construct the parabola of a shot at certain increments knowing only the angle of release and the distance traveled (clearly not very accurate). However, somehow all this worked out, and we managed to get a good shot on the close target- maybe 20 cm at most.

In other words, we still don't understand what the heck we're doing.
(We're completely rebuilding before Nationals, because we finally realized that no matter what we've tried, there are always insurmountable problems with this design. Every time we fix one of them, another one is created.)

our trajectory competely failed too =/ it was doing perfect, hitting pins at practice, and there everything just went wrong.
our guesses:
1) air is extremely dry in there. i run winter track meets in that track and its ridiculous, my throat like closes up every meet.
2) IT WAS SO COLD!!!! i was like shivering in there lolll my partner had her jacket on....
good job by the way! =] i was so proud that someone was finally closing in on FM... about time! and ur 200 pts over Columbia was pretty impressive/

Phenylethylamine wrote:At NY States yesterday, the targets were at 9.5 m and 3.5 m, with the close target 1.4 m off the ground.

We had managed to hit 9.5 m consistently in practice (our device has had problems with not getting the full distance, but we were under the impression that we had pretty much solved them), but when we put our device on that increment in the event, it went maybe 8.9 m at most; we didn't manage to hit the far target.

On the other hand, we were very worried about the close target, because in the process of getting the full distance, we had compromised our ability to hit shorter distances. We had also never specifically tested anything off the ground (we had a lot of problems finding space and time to test... there aren't many places in our school district with sufficiently high ceilings lol), so I attempted to construct the parabola of a shot at certain increments knowing only the angle of release and the distance traveled (clearly not very accurate). However, somehow all this worked out, and we managed to get a good shot on the close target- maybe 20 cm at most.

In other words, we still don't understand what the heck we're doing.
(We're completely rebuilding before Nationals, because we finally realized that no matter what we've tried, there are always insurmountable problems with this design. Every time we fix one of them, another one is created.)

If I put this together with what swimmm said, I would say that your problems on the far target could possibly be attributed to the rubber contracting or stiffening from the cold and dryness.

I had Regionals today, and I didn't get to see the Trajectory, but I heard that my teammates almost nailed the near target but didn't do so well on the far target. And then the catapult was fired without the tennis ball, which meant one of their four shots was completely wasted. Does anyone have a checklist or something of the sort that they go through before firing to make sure stuff like that doesn't happen?

We used to have one last year, but we wasted alot of time checking stuff off, so we plan who's doing what ahead of time, and we also check each other's work