Rocketry Planet
| The 2010 TARC rules are out, French to join the US, UK |
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| 2009 Archived News by Planet News | |
| Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | |
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The 2010 contest, which opens for registration on September 2, 2009, will continue to focus on flying an egg to a precise altitude and duration, but this year the teams will be required to use streamer recovery to return the egg and its recording altimeter. Use of a streamer will provide additional challenges as the teams compete to meet the duration event with the quicker recovery method. The altitude goal for 2010 is 825 feet. A couple of changes in the rules this year seek to offset areas of confusion for past events, specifically the use of pyrotechnic ejection charges and non-commercial electronics. The rules for 2010 do not allow any ejection charge that wasn't originally built into the rocket's motor, and any onboard electronics used have to be commercially made. These two areas were sources of confusion and allegation in the past, and the changes should address those concerns. National Association of Rocketry president Trip Barber went over the rules changes in an online distribution about the new rules, and offered this list of specifics on how the new rules would affect the contest for 2010:
The contest continues to be a great success for the TARC partners, and in 2010, the contest rules go international, as does the participation. "The French will be joining the UK and the US in this program for the 2009-2010 competition cycle," Barber said in his communication. "All nations will fly to the same rules, and the national winners will fly off against each other next year at the Farnborough Air Show in the UK." Website: http://www.rocketcontest.org/ Attachment: 2010 Team America Rocketry Challenge Rules (21KB Adobe PDF) |
WORLD WIDE WEB — The rules for the 2010 Team America Rocketry Challenge have been posted to the TARC website today, introducing "a new kind of challenge" to the student teams, rules that would force teams previously entered in the rocketry challenge to rethink their strategy in order to complete in the coming year.| << Previous Article | Next Article >> |
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The old school streamer duration trick was a 10:1 ratio streamer, made of stiff virgin paper which is fan folded for maximal drag, and a stiff stick at the mounting edge and an off-center mount to promote slow spinning of the streamer.
Jerry
I assume #7 is for altitude readings only as #6 prohibits the use of non-motor based ejection charges.
Good changes all in all.
Ed
Jerry they plugged that loophole also. The article contains this quote as well:
EDIT - Just realized this was already covered in Ed's post above. Sorry 'bout that.
I read the rule summary the same way you did - it suggests that non-pyro ejection, based on internal altitude calculation by commercial electronics, is still an option. I wonder if the actual rules are written that way, or if the summary took liberties with the "pyrotechnical" part of "pyrotechincal ejection charges except those built into the motors". The summary states "The rules for 2010 do not allow any ejection charge that wasn't originally built into the rocket's motor." That's a very different statement than the bulleted rule, and may be an inadvertent loophole. Also, flight control electronics are limited to commercial products, but what about electronics which operate mechanical separation systems?
I realize that this might seem pedantic, but why not just prohibit any active flight event which is not a built in function of the engine?
Kudos on the 40-45 second rule, though it leaves the altitude problem, since there is no error band in the altitude (is the perfectflight good to better than 0.5 feet? If so, then I take it back). The duration probably could have been a little tighter if it were just human reaction time that was causing issues. If the altitude is going to get a zero band, they probably should have required an altimeter with downloadable data to verify the actual beginning of flight and touchdown times. Personally, I prefer the error band since it reduces the randomness of the top places.
I read the rule summary the same way you did - it suggests that non-pyro ejection, based on internal altitude calculation by commercial electronics, is still an option. I wonder if the actual rules are written that way, or if the summary took liberties with the "pyrotechnical" part of "pyrotechincal ejection charges except those built into the motors". The summary states "The rules for 2010 do not allow any ejection charge that wasn't originally built into the rocket's motor." That's a very different statement than the bulleted rule, and may be an inadvertent loophole. Also, flight control electronics are limited to commercial products, but what about electronics which operate mechanical separation systems?
I am fairly certain that this loophole is intentional and I'm also pretty sure that you are reading it right. The summary language is not what I would rely on. The rules are linked in the original article and they are only a few pages long. See the section on Rocket Requirements - it's pretty clear on both counts. Essentially you can only use ejection charges that come with a motor and then only in the way intended by the manufacturer. I didn't see anywhere that prohibited using electronics and mechanical or other means that do not rely on pyro to accomplish ejection at a particular altitude.
Kudos on the 40-45 second rule, though it leaves the altitude problem, since there is no error band in the altitude (is the perfectflight good to better than 0.5 feet? If so, then I take it back). The duration probably could have been a little tighter if it were just human reaction time that was causing issues. If the altitude is going to get a zero band, they probably should have required an altimeter with downloadable data to verify the actual beginning of flight and touchdown times. Personally, I prefer the error band since it reduces the randomness of the top places.
I have felt this way and said so many times in the past. I have not formally proposed it but I always thought that using a multiplier on the time to increase the weight it played would be better since time to landing is a much more precise measurement than altitude via barometric sensor.
The Alt15k has 1-foot resolution, but I don't know what its repeatability or absolute accuracy are.
The new altimeters I'm working on have a typical sensor absolute accuracy of about 0.1% over a wide range of temperatures and pressures, due to an A/D that is built into the chip and factory calibration (the chip factory, not my "factory") at multiple temperatures. There's about 1 foot of sample-to-sample noise. With TARC and other contests in mind, I've been spending a lot of time in the last few weeks working on an apogee detection filter to reduce the noise to less than 1 foot, and to reliably throw out transients caused by deployment charges, etc. I think I have succeeded, but when I get my beta test altimeters back from the assembler (probably next week) I'll fly a bunch together so I can tell for sure. My goal is that if I fly 5 altimeters in the same rocket, they all beep out the same altitude with 1-foot resolution.
Has anyone tried an experiment like that with the Alt15k?
If there is both an altitude band and a time band, then you'd need some way to break ties. I'd like to see a reasonable error band on both, and anyone tied with a perfect score should do a fly-off of 3 flights, with the score based on the worst of the 3 flights, and no error bands. That would take the rest of the luck out of the equation.
Has anyone tried an experiment like that with the Alt15k?
We've flown three at a time, and the individual altimeters would vary by about +/- 5 feet from the median. If I can get some time this summer before school starts, I intend to fly eight at a time (that all that I've got) to see what the distribution is over several flights.
As Adrian mentioned, the Alt15K and Alt15KRev2 report at 1 foot intervals. There IS downloadable data on the flight (the last three flights on the Rev2).
Wow. I guess there's some real room for improvement then. That's encouraging (for me anyway)
Gary