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fishman100 wrote:If you had the chance to test your vehicle on the same location (gym, hallways, etc.) that GV will be held would you test on that surface? I had the opportunity last night and I was DQ'd today for doing so.

What? Do you mean testing on the actual competition area? We've done that before- last year at states, there was a large area of the gym that no one was using, so we blocked off a section and ran our mousetrap vehicle a few minutes before our scheduled run time. The supervisor didn't have a problem with it.

fishman100 wrote:If you had the chance to test your vehicle on the same location (gym, hallways, etc.) that GV will be held would you test on that surface? I had the opportunity last night and I was DQ'd today for doing so.

I'm curious about the circumstances behind this since there are no written rules banning practicing at the site before the competition. Was that a pre-announced tournament rule or something the event supervisor made up on the spot? Was it an invitational or a regional tournament?

chalker7 wrote:

fishman100 wrote:If you had the chance to test your vehicle on the same location (gym, hallways, etc.) that GV will be held would you test on that surface? I had the opportunity last night and I was DQ'd today for doing so.

I'm curious about the circumstances behind this since there are no written rules banning practicing at the site before the competition. Was that a pre-announced tournament rule or something the event supervisor made up on the spot? Was it an invitational or a regional tournament?

From what I heard, they decided to make the "rule" about not testing the morning of competition (this was Regionals). They said that we were "potentially getting an advantage", but isn't testing on the same surface similar to taking a practice test for an event?

Anyways we got 11th; pretty good considering that only 9 teams were in Tier 1.

fishman100 wrote: From what I heard, they decided to make the "rule" about not testing the morning of competition (this was Regionals). They said that we were "potentially getting an advantage", but isn't testing on the same surface similar to taking a practice test for an event?

Interesting, without hearing from the event supervisor it's impossible to make any sort of a judgement call on the whole situation, but my gut instinct is to say that it's incredibly difficult to enforce violations of a rule that predate the creation of the rule...

chalker7 wrote:

fishman100 wrote: From what I heard, they decided to make the "rule" about not testing the morning of competition (this was Regionals). They said that we were "potentially getting an advantage", but isn't testing on the same surface similar to taking a practice test for an event?

Interesting, without hearing from the event supervisor it's impossible to make any sort of a judgement call on the whole situation, but my gut instinct is to say that it's incredibly difficult to enforce violations of a rule that predate the creation of the rule...

There's a good discussion over on Towers about this sort of thing - judges making up rules above/beyond/outside "The Rules." The element here, of a "retroactive", pull it out of the air rule is .....inappropriate squared. Among other implications here would seem to be that the team from the school where this floor is (assuming the Tournament was at a school) would have be disqualified if they'd been using that room in the weeks before for testing/development

Balsa Man wrote:

chalker7 wrote:

fishman100 wrote: From what I heard, they decided to make the "rule" about not testing the morning of competition (this was Regionals). They said that we were "potentially getting an advantage", but isn't testing on the same surface similar to taking a practice test for an event?

Interesting, without hearing from the event supervisor it's impossible to make any sort of a judgement call on the whole situation, but my gut instinct is to say that it's incredibly difficult to enforce violations of a rule that predate the creation of the rule...

There's a good discussion over on Towers about this sort of thing - judges making up rules above/beyond/outside "The Rules." The element here, of a "retroactive", pull it out of the air rule is .....inappropriate squared. Among other implications here would seem to be that the team from the school where this floor is (assuming the Tournament was at a school) would have be disqualified if they'd been using that room in the weeks before for testing/development

That's what I was wondering... How far back would this apply? Just the night before? A week? Month? I think unless the event supervisor is setting up in that area, there should be no problem. I've done this once before with Electric Vehicle. Supervisor came in and told me to leave because he was going to start set up and I did. That was it...

When trying to account skid, does it increase the further you go, or does it remain constant at any distance?

questionguy wrote:When trying to account skid, does it increase the further you go, or does it remain constant at any distance?

Intuitively, I think it would decrease as distance increases but I have no math to back that up.

sachleen wrote:

questionguy wrote:When trying to account skid, does it increase the further you go, or does it remain constant at any distance?

Intuitively, I think it would decrease as distance increases but I have no math to back that up.

Your intuition is absolutely correct, and aligns with the physics.
The farther it goes, the slower it is going.
The slower it is going, the less energy it has (to be dissapated in braking- to go into skidding if the wheels lock up).
The less energy, the shorter the skid.
Just like in a real car- you slam on the brakes at 90 mph, you skid a long way. Slam them on at 20 mph, you don't skid nearly as far....

State competition is in 3 days and I am in desperate need of help. What do I do?